


Fix

by BlinkVinyl



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Eventual Trigger Warning, Other, mature themes in later chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-06-22 15:56:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 30,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15585426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlinkVinyl/pseuds/BlinkVinyl
Summary: At sixteen, staring down the middle of senior year, Sydney Romano-Reid was well liked. You needed something fixed, from a failing math grade to a bike, She was your girl. Then it happens. Her mom is arrested and social services finally manages to track down a father that she had never met. Now she's off to live with our resident genius. This might be the only thing she can't fix.





	1. Chapter 1

Fair warning for language. I do not own criminal minds but Sydney is all mine.

I reworked the whole first chapter so now the previous first chapter will be the new second chapter.

It had been a really good day, and believe me when I say I haven't had one of those in a really long time.

For one thing Aunt Ruth was in town. Maybe it was because there was only a ten year age difference between us, or maybe it was because she had seen more of the world at twenty six than I could ever hope to see, but Aunt Ruth was my favorite aunt.

Which is why I didn't get that angry when she pulled me and my little sister, Nico, out of school, before calling me out of work without telling us.

Nico, of course, was ecstatic. At age ten, having a free day off school when you aren't sick is like winning the prepubescent lottery, especially when nobody else gets the day off.

All I could think about while munching my way through Nonna's required toast breakfast was the fifty dollars that I wasn't going to be paid today and what UPenn would think about me skipping.

"What if the school finds out and tells UPenn? They could take away my scholarship."

Aunt Ruth rolled her eyes with a smile. "For someone with a detention record worth bragging about, you sure are worried about breaking the rules."

Nico laughed into her Lucky Charms and I, being the mature older sister I am, stuck my tongue out at her.

"Lucky Charms are a terrible breakfast choice." I said

"You're a terrible breakfast choice." She muttered, pulling the bowl closer to her person.

I wrinkled my nose at her before turning my attention back to Aunt Ruth.

"But really-" I began

"But really," she mimicked "Even if we were doing something wrong, which we aren't because I called the school, they wouldn't rat you out. They want you to have that scholarship almost as much as you do. It makes them look good."

I snorted. It was impossible to make Truman look good. Nevada has the highest dropout rate in the country and when you step into Truman you can see why. Four kids had been stabbed in the last three years, the textbooks are falling apart, and whatever laptops we do have are missing most of the keys. The janitors smoke pot under the stage, and the security guards feel girls up, patting us down when they didn't need to, hands hovering on our hips and asses. I made sure that Nico got that scholarship to McAllister for a reason.

We do have a decent debate team, cross country team, and a really good volleyball team, though.

I mulled it over while Georgia, my boston terrier sniffed around my socked toes.

She was right that Truman wouldn't report it, but not because I made them look good, but because they just don't care.

"Please Syd," Nico begged "please can we have some fun?"

How could I say no to that?

I sigh quietly and roll my eyes.

"Fine," I snap "Fine, whatever, let's do it."

"Girl's day!" Aunt Ruth crows.

"Yes!" Nico whoops loudly, startling Georgia and Nico's bulldog Naaz.

I roll my eyes once more and swallow the last of my toast.

When the police come we are all in our pajamas piled on Nonna's couch, watching a movie that came out last month, 'Now You See Me.'

There was a mostly empty pizza box sitting on the coffee table and the new polish on our toes reflects the lights from the tv.

All of the windows were open because according to Nonna and Gramps' italian beliefs air conditioning is bad luck. It smelled like fresh air and it was just the right temperature.

Georgia was twelve pounds of snuggly warmth burrowed into my stomach. She holds me down and keeps me from floating away while Jack throws cards on screen.

"He's like you," Nico mumbled sleepily, head resting on my shoulder.

"He is way better than I am." I responded commenting on my card throwing abilities, not really paying attention to the movie.

I was warm, and full, and happy. I was completely calm. Almost floaty.

I stared at the black mocking bird tattoo on my wrist for a moment. The tattoo almost never sees the light of day, usually covered by bracelets, or my watch, or even heavy duty concealer in extreme situations.

I was tracing my fingers over it when the doorbell rings.

The peaceful feeling was sucked out of my body and suddenly the real world was back.

The police are never on our side.

I wound up in an emergency foster care home for the first three days with a woman who constantly looked deeply afraid. She wrung her hands and fluttered around the house like a squeaky moth. She occasionally appeared in the doorway to a bedroom that was mine for the time being and asked me questions like 'are you okay?' in her squeaky mouse voice before fluttering off to pester her porta potty of a husband. Emergency placements like those don't usually last very long, the longest they can really keep someone in a place like that is about a month, but the longest I've ever been is twelve days.

My mother's trial was insanely quick, by the time I was out of the emergency home and into a group home, my mother was sentenced to four years for possession and distribution, but her boyfriend, who's main hobby was cooking crank in our kitchen, was off happily living his pathetic life as a free man.

Go figure.

The only silver lining was that Nico would now be living with her dad full time instead of just the weekends. My stepfather, Michael, is actually a genuinely decent guy who owned a really cool music store up town. He has a nice house, in a nice neighborhood, with a nice yard. He gave Nico anything she wanted or needed without being a pushover or an asshole. And he's nice to me, which is not a high priority on most of my mom's old boyfriend's lists.

He loves Nico just as much as I do and because of that Nico will never have to play russian roulette, foster care style like me and my friend, Hollis, have had too.

Thank God for small miracles.

By the end of the week I have the group homes routine down. I was not allowed to go to Nonna's for the weekend because I hadn't been allowed a pass yet but Nonna and Nico came to visit. Gramps didn't because my being there made him angry. He explained over the phone and I told him I understood. I did. I do.

We all hung out in my room, Nico and I hung up my favorite posters on the white cinderblock walls while Nonna smoothed out my sheets, staring at my roommates bed.

"It's fine Nonna," I said "she's really nice."

I didn't actually know if my roommate was nice, we had never really talked but she was hardly Satan. And she did vacate our room so I could have time with my family without her.

It only took a week and I was resigned to this knew life.

I would only be here about eight months any way. It honestly wasn't worth the fight that Nonna and Gramps would lose, just like they did last time. The problem is that without Maria, we weren't allowed to call her mom, I had nowhere to go that was allowed by social services.

Aunt Ruth doesn't have a house, Uncle Tony is a convicted felon, and Nonna and Gramps don't have the room, the car, or the time.

So all that was left was foster care, and not for the first time, either.

"It's really not bad here." I promise.

Nonna nodded and smooth out my sheets again, murmuring something in italian that I couldn't quite catch.

On Monday, I am back in school, where the whispers follow me around. The drug dealer's daughter is this week's hottest gossip, but I ignore it and go about my life. I go to open gym in the mornings for an hour, I eat lunch with the same people I always do, and then I go to debate practice where I talk to the walls for at least thirty minutes as though they are a rapt audience. After school I go to work at the bakery or the bookstore for at least four hours. I go about my life as though nothing has changed. I do this the until the second Thursday after I return to my classes. Thursday is my day off because I have to meet with my social worker, Brenda, about what my life is going to be like until I can blow this popsicle stand.

After debate I skate home slowly, enjoying the ride and the feeling of the wind as it pushes against my face. I show up four minutes and twenty nine seconds late, but it's worth it because sitting in that room with only Brenda and Carl, who owns the home, makes me feel like I'm suffocating.

The social worker coming to visit it never ends well for me.

When I get inside the main building, Becca, my house parent, directs me right to Carl's office, with a worried sort of smile.

Damn. This place wasn't the worst.

It's a good thing I didn't really unpack.

I tap tentatively on Carl's door before pushing it open. Brenda smiles like this is going to be the best day of my life but also like she's trying to placate me, like coaxing a wild animal out of it's corner. Carl just grimaces at me like he's trying to smile but it's just too hard.

What a comfort you are, Carl.

"Sydney!" Brenda says "Please sit down. We need to talk." She points to a chair next to her and my heart rate soars.

This is going to be a really bad day.

I sigh and sink into the chair clutching my backpack in a hug, skateboard at my feet. I haven't taken my helmet off yet, so I probably look ridiculous.

Brenda folds her hands in her lap.

"Sydney, we have found your father."

Have you ever been sucker punched in the stomach so hard that your rib cage splinters and you can't breath and you may have ruptured your spleen?

Yeah.

This is kind of like that.

"What?" I hiss sharply, beginning to understand her cornered animal approach.

"We've found your father," she says again, like it's nothing, like she's talking about the weather.

"His name is Spencer," she continues, like that helps me somehow.

"How do you know?" I cut her off. She glances across the desk at carl who looks deeply uncomfortable.

"Well," she says "Well your mother gave us his name-"

"So?" I interrupt "Do you have any idea how many spencer's there are in the United States alone at any given time?" 48,932. That's how many Spencers there are, that's twice as many Sydney's as there are in the United States. Then there are also 125,772 Reids. I twist at the dinosaur fidget ring on my finger while repeating the numbers in my head.

She shoots me a look like she is finally getting sick about my attitude and lack of thankfulness for this immense favor she has done me. She pulls a file out of her bag and hands it to me.I open it up notice that it's the results for a DNA test.

Jesus.

"Sydney, we compared your DNA. He is a paternal match."

My shoulders slump and, for once, I sit quietly. My knee taps faster.

DNA. Finally a language I can understand. I stare at the numbers for a while, taking them in and letting the information process for a moment. Social Workers lie. Mother's lie. Bodies don't lie. DNA doesn't lie.

I push my face into the cool canvas of my backpack and wonder if this is how Nina From Group feels during each of her never ending existential crises.

Poor Nina.

I calmly raise me face out of my bag, hand still clutching the file, as though this is just a normal day in Sydneyland.

"What happens now?"

Brenda explains to me that I would be moving to Virginia and that I had a week to inform my teachers, quit my jobs, and just generally pack away my whole life eight months before I was supposed to. It's longer than most kids get, she reminds me. That's a thing adults do to make you feel bad for feeling bad. Someone out there has it worse, so what right do you have to complain?

There are starving children in Africa, don't you know?

I hate this suffering contest that I didn't willingly enter. I look over at Brenda and wonder how she thinks that she has the right to say that to me. Brenda has probably never missed a meal in her life, or ran home to see if there was an eviction notice on the door, Brenda never had to build her sister a man proof closet that locks from the inside, fifteen year old Brenda didn't sob over bills at the kitchen table. Brenda has never had to take care of her strung out mother, never had to throw away the syringes.

She probably doesn't even know the child abuse hotline number.

In this moment I hate Brenda and her perfect life and her smug adult smirk, thinking she knows everything.

White, suburban, soccer mom Brenda doesn't know anything.

"Sydney," Carl says, speaking for the first time "We understand that this is a lot. "

I'm sure you do Carl, you emotional radar, you.

"Maybe you'd like to speak to your therapist-"

Jesus Christ. The last thing I need to do is talk to my prison appointed head shrink.

I stand up and pull my backpack onto my shoulders.

"No. I'm going to my room now."

I pick up my skateboard and leave.

They don't call me back.

When I get to my room I send Hollis a quick SOS text telling her to come over immediately.

I wait a second before typing 'EMERGENCY.'

'OMW' she types back two seconds later. On My Way. '10 minutes.'

'Bring your laptop' I reply quickly and set my phone, a gift from Aunt Ruth, down on the comforter. I push my skateboard under the bed and set my helmet on the dresser before pulling my noise cancelling headphones out of my backpack and slipping them on and firing up my laptop. My laptop, whom Hollis and I have affectionately named 'Milo,' isn't hightech, but he does what I want him to. That mostly includes working when I need to type an essay, take my online classes, or search something up.

A little slow, but he does what I need.

And, right now, I need to research.

I open google tab and type in his name, the first things that pop up are Facebook pages.

Surprise, surprise.

I don't have a Facebook account, or any social media outside of Tumblr for that matter, for two reasons:

One; I don't trust the privacy settings. At all. Like, I am creeping on all of these Facebook pages and they will probably never know.

Two; I just don't see the point. I don't really want everyone to know what I'm doing all the time. You do you other people, but I like flying under the radar.

I scroll through all of the Spencer Reids. A fourteen year old stoner from Canada? No. Twenty something waitress? No. Fifty four year old retired Marine? No, thank God. That would be a pervy twenty two year old age difference from Maria.

There are a couple others that I know for a fact are No's. I sigh and pull off my headphones, rubbing my ears.

"Knock, Knock." Hollis announces, strutting into my room as if were her own. She throws her backpack onto my floor, sighing dramatically.

"So sorry I'm late," she said "my damn Porsche wouldn't start, the piece of crap."

"Oh, God," I groan "I hate when that happens, you buy the island yet?"

"Um, of course!" She says in a whiny voice "The deed is right next to my unicorn permit. Did MIT call you about the Fields Medal yet?"

I nod. "I won of course, the ceremony is in Boston on Friday. We're flying first class, they tried to put us in second class, but I told them that that just won't do."

"The Nerve of them. Don't they know we're royalty?"

"I know, but I happen to have even bigger news!"

"Ohhh, do tell!" she said with a laugh pulling her laptop out of her bag and flopping next to me on my bed.

"Social Services tracked down my dad."

She laughs. "You're funny Syd, that's probably the most unrealistic thing you've said all day. So what was the big emergency?"

I stay quiet and turn to look at her. Hollis looks like an ice princess, pale skin, white blonde, long hair, crystal blue eyes. We're opposites. I have the natural Italian tan of the rest of my family that only got darker in the summer, shoulder length, brown hair, hazel eyes. She was built like my sister, like a dancer. I am built to run. I have a good four inches on her, even though she is almost two years older. I like darker colors, she has an affinity for pastels and flower crowns.

I doubt that we would be friends if we hadn't grown up in the same neighborhood.

When she finally looks over at me we are nearly nose to nose.

"What?" she asks with a smile. I just keeps staring at her and raise an eyebrow. Her face falls.

"Oh." she says sitting bolt upright. "Oh, oh my God, you're serious. You're serious right now."

"Yeah." I say.

"Fuck." she declared before demanding that I tell her every detail of what had happened in the last hour.

After I tell her She pulls two monster energy drinks out of her bag.

"I was going to save these for later, but you're moving away and there is simply no time to waste."

I take the green one and she cracks open the blue.

"We have research to do."

We clink our cans and start typing.

"I have finally discovered where you have gotten your over achieving habits." she informs me "This guy is everywhere!"

It's true. I have found at least five papers that he has written and about twenty articles where he is mentioned. Hollis has about ten more.

"Three PhD's before the age of twenty three, joins the FBI, winds up in the BAU, who are highly prestigious, in his early twenties. This guy's goldfish is probably smarter than I am." I stated. If my math is correct, he would have had to graduate high school at around twelve. That is a six grade skip. I did two.

She punches me on the arm. "Shut up. You are a literal genius."

"No I'm not."

"Syd, you have an IQ of 173 and you can quote a conversation we had five years ago, word for word. You are the definition of a genius."

"No I'm not. And I hate that word." I hate that word so much, along with 'gifted' and 'prodigy.' I hate that word.

I can feel her roll her eyes at me.

"I don't understand you." I ignore her and continue researching.

When I was little I asked my mom why I was the only kid in my family without a dad. Maria, not one to sugarcoat things, told me the truth. He was a good guy with a bright future. Kids suck the life out of you. She may or may not have loved him but she knew that he deserved better. He honestly deserved that glowing bright future. Having a baby pulls you down into poverty quicksand. He didn't deserve to get stuck.

For once in my life I have to agree with my mother, Dr. Spencer Reid had gone on to do great things. I can't help but wonder if he would have stayed in Vegas if he knew about me. He seems like a decent guy. He probably would have.

I would have crushed his future just like I did my mother's.

I shiver and swear to myself that I will try to take up as little of his time and space as possible. I will try to make this poor guy's next eight months fly by. He will hardly notice I'm there.

I spend the next week saying goodbye.

I hate saying goodbye.

Brenda and I go to the airport at six in the morning where I am passed off to an attendant who leads me through TSA and onto the plane. She makes sure that I find my proper seat before going up to join the other attendants. I plug my headphones into my phone and start playing my most calming and upbeat playlist. I try not to focus on the fact that the lady next to me is too far into my personally space or how hard Nico cried the night before when I left her. All of the promises I made that seem like nothing. I'll call you everyday, we can skype and we can still read with each other. I promise IpromiseIpromise. There is a loud beep noise and I pull one headphone out of my ear.

They make an announcement telling everyone to put their phone on airplane mode and buckle their seatbelts and stow away our bags. My stomach drops to my toes.

I don't want to go.

I breath in and out and pull my tangle out of my backpack before zipping it back up and pushing it under the chair in front of me. I twist at it nervously and keep breathing. My attendant comes down the line checking to make sure everyone did as told.

"Everything okay, Sweetie?" She asks me smiling sympathetically at my furiously twisting hands.

"Yeah." I say "Yeah, I'm good."

The woman next to me speaks up when she leaves.

"Is this your first time flying?"

I nod my head.

"Don't worry," she reassures "It's safer than riding in a car."

I almost tell her that if she is talking odds of crashing then, yes, it is safer, but if we do crash your odds of survival are exceedingly slim especially compared to a car crash.

And that's not what I'm worried about.

I don't though. I just smile and thank her.

Pretending like I always am.

My flight attendant leads me over to a perky but tired looking blonde woman who says her name is Susan when we exit the plane.

This is it. There is no going back.

Okay, so, I was just going to split this up and put chunks of it at the beginning of each chapter so my OC alone doesn't just take up the whole story but it is kind of confusing so I'm just going to put them all together and hope for the best. It's kind of choppy so I'm sorry about that. I guess this is a kind of preface? Any way I'm working on the next chapter now.

Blink Vinyl


	2. Chapter 2

Okay so this is my first criminal minds fic so if I get the characters wrong, sorry. I have been working and reworking this story forever and I was sick of it just existing in loose paper in my folders. If you like let me know in the reviews and if you find any spelling or grammar mistakes please inform me. Flames and hate are unappreciated, but helpful tips are welcome.

 

I am not fully panicking until Susan, my new social worker, is ringing the doorbell and by that point it's too late to run.

What am I even doing here? I should have taken off when I had the chance! I should have gone to live in the tunnels. I should have filled out the papers. I should have-

The door to the apartment twenty three (what an awful number) pulls open the door to reveal a man on the other side. I quickly suck in a breath and try to hold onto my Las Vegas Poker face. I try to gather as much information as I can about him as quickly as I can.

I go over how he looks first. He's tall and lanky, six feet at least, and he's thin. His hair is the same shade of brown as mine, but his is more curly where mine is wavy and his is much shorter. I focus on his eyes briefly.

Eyes are good, you can tell a lot about a person based on their eyes. His are, physically, exactly like mine. Same color, shape, everything. Nice to know, but not all that helpful. What is helpful is that he has yet to look me directly in my face, he looks at Susan but never in her eyes, a habit I forcibly kicked when I was twelve.

"Oh," He says "Uh hi, Susan."

Susan, a soft, middle aged woman with her hair curled like it's still the sixties, says "Spencer, this is Sydney, Sydney, Spencer."

She gestures between us as if she needs to make sure that we each understand who she's introducing in this empty hallway.

"Hi," I say as I give a sort of half smile and a little wave. I can almost hear Maggie hissing at me from the grave but I ignore it. Shaking one's hand is a customary greeting, it is polite in the average circumstances, but it wouldn't be now. Susan stands partially in front of me and the doorway Spencer stands in is small. It would be rude to even attempt.

"Hello, Sydney," He says as he looks at me with wide eyes, and for a second I think that he might actually be more afraid than I am.

I take mental stock of what I'm wearing as he invites us inside. Loose light gray tank top, dark blue, mid thigh shorts, black knee brace, red Converse high tops, and my red and white letterman jacket. My hair has been curled and thrown back into a ponytail and there are trace amounts of makeup on my face, just enough to cover my freckles and the purple shadows beneath my eyes. I am five foot six, weigh 115 pounds soaking wet, and I look it too. If you didn't know me and you just passed me by on the street. I'd hardly register as a threat, even without a bum leg.

It register's vaguely that he's talking to Susan about something or another. Well, it's more like Susan's talking and he's listening, but whatever.

The apartment is kind of small but it feels like a palace compared to some of the places I've lived in. The walls are an odd shade of green that makes my muscles tense up, but I really stop caring as soon as my eyes locked on the books.

Woah.

For a second I feel my poker face slide before pulling it back. One wall is almost completely bookshelves set into it. There are smaller shelves scattered about the area that I can see. There doesn't seem to be a single open space on any of them. So far this has been the only truly calming part of this unfortunate endeavor.

I want to walk over to them and start touching so bad but I chastise myself in the way you might chastise a dog sanz the spray bottle. No, Sydney. Bad, Sydney.

I tighten my grip on my suitcase, to make absolutely sure I won't move from this spot. I almost lock my knees too, but if walking sends throbbing spikes of pain from my knee up my leg, I don't want to think of what a lock would do.

I pull my attention back to the rest of the apartment. It's old with weird lighting, but their are huge windows that don't even have bars on them like Nonna's house, which makes up for it. All of the furniture is either leather or wood.

"This is my friend Jennifer Jereau," Spencer says, snapping me back into focus.

Crap.

How much have I missed? I glance to Susan as subtly as possible. She is still smiling and relaxed so my time lapse must have been brief and unnoticed.

"You can call me JJ." A tall blonde woman says reaching forward to shake Susan's hand from next to Spencer, before turning to me.

I put on one of my most confident oh-aren't-I-perfect smiles and stick out my right hand.

"It's nice to meet you, I'm Sydney."

She is insanely pretty. Pretty enough that my ego may suffer permanent damage. Her hands are warm and I try not to think about the bacteria infested cesspool that is the human hand or that I want to peel my own skin off. I take a slow, deep breath.

Be normal, Sydney. Think normal person thoughts.

The handshake only lasts about a second. I have a good handshake due to a ton of practice. Practice I hated with the fire of a thousand suns, but practice all the same.

"Sydney," Susan says turning to me and putting her hand on my shoulder.

Don't touch me, I think viciously, my face never changing.

"I need to speak with Spencer privately for a moment, okay?"

Like I have a choice.

"Sure," I say happily "I'll stay here with JJ." She smiles her tired, airhead smile before going with spencer into the kitchen.

There is a slight pause and I can hear her start to talk about my relevant medical history, mainly my epipen usage, or lack there of because i haven't eaten a walnut since I was eight, and my severe reactions to Beta Lactams, like penicillin. Death by anaphylaxis, severe reactions.

Clearly this is a very fascinating conversation to be having about your unknown daughter.

Then there was another slightly more awkward pause.

Sydney has a sensory processing disorder. I can hear the words in my head as clearly as if she had said them into my ear, in the same voice that they used to tell my mother when I first got diagnosed. A fist clenches in my stomach. There is nothing quite like having a stranger talk to a stranger about your psychiatric disorders. My ears heat up in the kind of shame that I haven't felt in ages because no matter how fantastic I get at hiding it under my Faux normalcy, that tag is going to follow me for the rest of my life.

For a moment I wait for him to get angry and demand she send me back to Vegas, or for some denial at least. Maybe ask that they redo the blood test because there is no way that I am his daughter, there has to be some mistake-

Their talk becomes slightly more hushed and I feel my face get hotter.

"I can show you your room, if you'd like." JJ offers, grabbing the handle of my carry on suitcase. I pull my duffle bag higher up on my shoulder and agree, if only because I don't want to listen to Susan talk about me when I'm not there, like she is trying to sell him a used car.


	3. Chapter 3

I follow JJ back into a sort of hallway that has three doors. The first door is open and leads into a bathroom.

Good to know.

JJ pushes the second door open to reveal a bedroom, not huge but far larger than anything I had ever had.

"Woah," I gasped "Is this is for me?"

She sends me a sort of bemused look. "Yep, it's all yours."

"You sure?"

"I helped set it up for you."

"Wicked cool. Thanks."

Judging by the single twin sized bed pushed up in the corner, I wouldn't be sharing it with anybody. Also a first for me. I've shared a room for as long as I can remember.

The walls were a pale blue color, almost grey, and far more comfortable for me that the green ones. The bed was on one side of a window, also without bars, on the other side there was a wooden desk with a rolling chair.

My lips pull up a little at that. I love rolling chairs almost as much as I love exercise balls, less bouncy, but more normal. On the wall with a door there is a dresser with the same kind of wood as the desk. The closet door is open, once again it is small but nice. Just enough for a hanger rod and a large overhead shelf.

I have no idea what I am going to do with that much space. Nico used up three fourths of our closet, my section was used mostly for my debate clothes and jackets.

I move slowly over to the bed and set down my duffle.

The bed itself gives me the slightest bit of hope. The bedspread and pillow cases are navy, my third favorite color, and it's pushed into the corner which is how I always have my rooms. I subtly brush my fingers against the fabric and pray. I breathe a sort of relieved sigh. It doesn't make me want to crawl out of my skin, thank god. I wouldn't be able to sleep with it if it did, but I also wouldn't be able to ask for a different one. The frame is the same wood as every other piece of furniture in this room and high enough off the ground to fit my suitcase underneath.

It feels like a real bedroom, not a prison cell or febreeze commercial.

It takes a minute to realise that JJ has been watching me the whole time.

"It's really nice," I say, attempting to fill up the silence.

She smiles.

"Spence will be happy you like it."

I blink, surprised. I can't imagine why he would care what I think.

"Alright, Sydney," Susan said, appearing in the doorway, Spencer trailing behind her. "There's just a few more things to go over before I get out of your hair."

JJ excuses herself and takes Spencer with her.

"First, you have an appointment already set up with a new doctor for your knee in two weeks to see if you can stop wearing the brace everywhere, until then you have to

keep up with your assigned physical therapy and-"

"Absolutely no running, digging, or jumping." I finish "I know."

She nods "try to avoid stairs as much as possible."

"This apartment is on the third floor of a building with no locatable elevator."

She ignores me.

"You have to take your medications. All of them."

"I'm not taking the painkillers."

She rolls her eyes and sighs. She must have been told that this is a battle that Brenda and my doctors fought and lost. They considered this an unreasonable stand. I

figure that they can shove their considerations.

"Okay. Take some Tylenol then, but you have to take the rest."

I bite back the sarcastic remarks dancing on my tongue and agree.

"And social services has set you up with a new therapist, your first appointment is on Friday."

I can't even be bothered to argue. She takes a deep breath.

"Another thing, your mother is allowed to contact you."

I sputter out protests and she holds up a hand to stop me. "You, however, are not required to return contact."

That's it. She doesn't preach about forgiving my mother 'for my own sake' or anything. I almost smile at the faint amount of fire in her voice and demeanor.

"This is a really good placement, Sydney. Please just give it a shot."

I let out a heavy breath. "I know, I'll be on my best behavior. I won't even set any houses on fire, or knock over any convenience stores. Gas stations maybe, but no convenience stores."

She actually smiles. "That's all I ask."

"It'll be a challenge."

"I'm sure."

Susan departs shortly after with the promise of returning to check on me in a month or so. JJ leaves shortly after saying that she needs to go home to her son, Henry. She seems like a mom, so I'm not really surprised and I already figured that, while there is no way that JJ and Spencer are just 'friends' they aren't romantically involved. Siblings is a better comparison.

Spencer and I wind up in the living room sitting on opposing couches in complete silence. Every once in awhile I glance over at him from the corner of my eye. He seems as uncomfortable as I am and, even though neither of us is directly facing each other, I catch him glancing at me too.

If I was half as tough as I think I am I would try to slouch a little, maybe unclasp my freezing cold hands- just try to look a little more comfortable and relaxed- but I am, in fact, a chicken, so I can't do any of those things.

I perch on the edge of my seat, my spine traded in for a metal rod, with my knees neatly crossed in front of me, hands resting on top of them. I feel more like I'm applying for a job than- for lack of a better word- bonding with Spencer. I shift slightly and check my watch. 3:47 in the afternoon. It's only about one back home. At one o'clock on a Saturday I should be well into my seventh hour of the Mrs. Lisowski's International bakery double shift. I would probably be serving Mrs. Andreiko her Khrustyky while we chattered in Ukrainian about the weather or her granddaughter.

Nico's probably practicing her violin right now.

I am examining my perpetually chipped fingernail polish when he finally speaks.

"Did you eat?"

I send him a faintly startled look.

"Pardon?"

He tries again. "Did you eat lunch? Are you hungry? I don't know if I have anything you would like on hand but there's a diner about a block from here if you'd like to go…" He manages to get this all out in a single, rambling breath before trailing off into nothingness, offer floating in the air.

"Okay," I say, unfolding my hands and rubbing them on my bare legs. "But can I change first? It was way warmer in Vegas."

I change into one of the only pairs of ripless skinny jeans I own and my favorite electric blue sweater before I put my brace back on and grab my purse out of my duffle, along with a black beanie. Back in Vegas we were in the middle of a really warm January, apparently Virginia did not get the memo. I pull the beanie down over my ears and climb back into my letter jacket, wishing I had a winter coat.

I look out the window and watch a few fat puffs of snow float around my window.

I shrug my sleeves down over my hands and go back to the living room, trying to mentally prepare myself for eating out. Restaurants are a bit of a problem for me.

No; scratch that. Food is a bit of a problem for me, especially new food. If I don't like the texture I won't eat it, or worse, I'll start gagging. There is nothing quite like gagging in the middle of a restaurant surrounded by strangers.

And don't even get me started on places like Chuck E. Cheese's. It's been five years and even thinking about that experience still puts me on edge.

Spencer and I walk down to the apartment building's parking garage and he leads me to a Volvo that seems to be about a decade old, but I doubt he drives it often. It's in pretty good condition for its age.

He unlocks the doors and I crawl into the passenger seat, promptly pulling on my seatbelt. It smells like old books, vanilla, and a little bit of coffee. This is the nicest smelling and cleanest car I've ever been in. No cigarette smoke or burns, no spilled beer, no fast food wrappers, no sweat. Just books, vanilla, and coffee.

My mother liked this guy? This clean, seemingly decent guy? What the hell happened?

The last guy smelled like cat piss, rotten eggs, and burning plastic.

When he starts the car the radio immediately picks up in the middle of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5.

He quickly offers to change it from his CD to the radio, looking a little embarrassed.

"No thanks," I say "I love beethoven, he's my favorite composer."

He looks extremely happy about this revelation, probably relieved I'm not going to tie him down and force him to listen to gangsta rap and other teenager music.

"Me too! Did you know that-" He proceeds to tell me everything he knows about Beethoven in the span of the five minutes that it takes to get to the diner, park, and walk up to the waitress. I listen closely and offer in my own facts when I can, because while I know most of them, I don't know all of them, and nothing feels worse than talking about something you find cool only to realise the person you are talking to doesn't give a damn. It hurts your soul just a little bit every time, and eventually you just stop talking. If no one cares what you have to say, then what's the point?

It is the longest and least awkward conversation we've had.

The diner is nearly empty, except for a business suit on a Blackberry, an elderly couple eating pancakes, and two waitresses, one of which leads Spencer and I to a booth by a window. Once again we sit opposite each other. We order drinks immediately, He gets coffee and I get lemonade. While I do love my coffee, I have exceeded my caffeine quota for today and I actually wouldn't mind sleeping for once.

I pull off my beanie and jacket and smooth out my hair before rolling up the sleeves of my sweater.

"So," he starts "What do you like to do for fun?"

I almost laugh. The question is so basic, it should be easy to answer, but I've got nothing.

I haven't had time for fun in ages. Not since the summer at the very least. Between work, Nico, school, and the social functions I am required to attend to keep my status, my free time may as well be an endangered species. There is no Nico here though, I haven't been enrolled in school yet, and I don't have a job yet either. My status means nothing here because I don't know anyone. I actually feel a bit of relief. It will be nice to have time again. And in a couple weeks I can start practicing again.

I analyse the question for longer that I probably should, especially for my bland answers.

"I listen to music and I play volleyball," I pause for half a second before continuing "I'm an assistant coach the Pee-Wee team back home, I mean, I was, anyway. And I read. A lot."

His smile could power a small city for several months.

"What do you like to read?"


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got, like, two pages into what will be next chapter before I realised that I jumped way too far ahead. I am officially begging for prompts now. And reviews. Reviews are my life force. Apologies.

My eyes snap open and I am pushing myself up onto my elbows before I am even fully awake.

It is pitch black and totally silent in the room. Not Vegas. I'm not in Vegas.

Where am I?

Where's Nic-

Oh.

Right.

I flop back down onto the mattress and put my hands over my face. My breathing is too fast so I force my lungs to expand and contract slowly.

In. Out. In. Out.

I can't remember what I dreamed about but judging by my nervous systems reaction to it, I'm glad I don't.

My instincts are screaming at me to check on Nico and I have her contact up and am ready to push 'call' before I pause for a second to think. It is six thirteen in the morning which means it is about four back home. I can't wake Nico up at four in the morning.

I nearly call her anyway before shaking my head and powering down my phone completely as a deterrent. It is four in the morning and I am considering calling and waking up my ten year old sister just to assuage my paranoid bullshit.

I am a trainwreck.

I lie on my new bed for as long as it takes to get my heart to cool it's jets and then some. By the time I get up the sun is beginning to rise, throwing light pink hues into my pitch black bedroom. It is illogical, but my brain is going nuts trying to figure out when the tourists are going to start spilling out of the casinos that aren't there and where the hell all of the cars and screaming drunks went.

Its funny. I never really noticed the noise when it was there but now that its gone its all I can focus on.

I think that it may be easier to assimilate with the lights on so I twist the knob on my desk side lamp until it clicks to life. My bedroom is fuzzy so I snatch my glasses up off the table and push them onto my face. My glasses are square shaped with thick, black, plastic rims.

Nerd glasses.

I never wear them in public.

My tenth anniversary copy of Deviance by David Rossi is crammed in between my legs and the wall, which is where it wound up after I fell asleep reading it last night.

You know that you are a real freak when you read about sadistic serial killers to get your mind to wind down enough to sleep at night.

You also know your own freakishness every time you stop to notice that your favorite author only writes about the horrific things that real-life people have done and yet- you own a copy of each book he's written. And then one that is signed because you snuck out at one in the morning and went to California with your equally freakish friend to go to a book signing.

A fracking book signing.

You drove all night to get there and got a massive, crippling migraine in the process.

And that you didn't regret it.

At all.

Like not even a little bit.

It was totally worth it.

Yep. A total freak.

I pick Deviance up off of my bed and opened it to the page I was on before I fell asleep and start back up where I left off. It is only six which for me is sleeping in but for everyone else it seems to be ungodly.

Miller, my mom's boyfriend before Mr. Crank-Cooker, hated when I got up early and I suffered the consequences for those actions. I don't dare get out of bed before seven on a weekend.

Ever.

I sit up, leaning against the headboard, until I hear someone moving around in the apartment and the smell of coffee reaches my nose. I fold the corner of the page I am on and set it on my bedside table, next to the lamp. I had already finished it once and was halfway through it again in the twenty minutes it took for Spencer to wake up, so I didn't really need to but whatever.

I crawled out from under the warm covers and pulled my hair up into a messy bun at the top of my head. I peel off my socks (one with planets, the other with T-rexes wearing sunglasses, I hate matching socks.) and throw them into the laundry basket before continuing with my morning routine, which starts with physical therapy.

I sit on the floor and bend my knee slowly in whatever positions the paper my doctor gave to me says to. I hate PT, but I need my knee to be fully functional. No PT, no knee, no knee, no volleyball, no volleyball, no scholarship, no scholarship, no college, no college and then suddenly I'm a heroin addict dying of aids in a dirty back alley.

Or worse- I turn into my mother.

That thought keeps me pushing through the pain. It's not as bad as it was but it still hurts. Two more weeks and my collagen fibres should be at their best.

When I'm finished I wrap my brace back around my knee.

I should shower. I need to shower.

I consider my options. At home I would just grab my clothes and towel and shower, but I'm not at home. I'm not at a friends house. I am not in a hotel.

I am an unwanted guest.

And I need to shower.

I stand in the middle of the room and consider my options.

I could get dressed and not shower and my hair can just be greasy. I can wait for an invitation and hope he notices without me looking weird. I can just march out to the bathroom with confidence that I don't have.

God.

I. Am. Pathetic.

How have I made it this far in life?

I shift my weight from foot to foot, and go over this in my head for ten or so minutes and try to analyse my best option.

Eventually I just sigh and pull a different pair of socks out of the top drawer of my dresser. Part of me is thankful that I unpacked everything last night.

I never unpack.

I pull on the new pair of socks (one black with constellations, the other purple with hedgehogs) and pull the door open enough to peek my head out. There is a somewhat loud crash in the kitchen that has me out of my room before I can regret that I am wearing a t-shirt that reads "Sorry, I can't. I have to cram for the Starfleet Academy entrance exams" and plaid pajama shorts decorated by penguins in scarves. Both of which are things that I would never be caught dead in if anyone I knew could see me. Some girls sleep in matching pajama sets, some girls sleep like they are in the movies or the middle of a photo shoot.

Not me.

Sleep is the only time I don't have to be pretty.

In the kitchen Spencer is busy trying to mop up a spilled cup of coffee.

"Are you okay?" I ask and then jump at the same time as he does. The only difference is when I jump I don't knock anything over. I watch as his elbow collides with the overturned mug and sends it to the floor where it shatters.

I cringe and take a step back instinctively as my right hand goes immediately to the necklace around my throat.

"I am so sorry!" I say and wait for the furry that usually follows a situation like this.

It doesn't come.

"Sydney!" He says sounding surprised rather than angry.

I should help him clean up the broken glass, but I can't make myself move.

"I'm sorry," he says "Did I wake you up?"

I stare blankly at him for a moment before slowly replying "No."

I realise that that sounds a little too blunt so I continue. "I've been up for a while."

He seems surprised by this, which makes sense because it is like six fifty on a Sunday and, as a teenager, I should still be dead to the world.

He bends down to pick up the glass which makes me feel eight different kinds of freaked out because that is my job and I'm just standing here not doing it and he isn't even yelling at me. He is just on the floor cleaning up a mess I caused.

I take a quick step into the kitchen.

And then another.

I force myself to walk until I can reach a few large chunks of mug. The mug isn't really glass but ceramic painted red, not that it really matters because that doesn't stop it from being sharp. I carefully scoop up the pieces within my reach when I kneel on the ground.

"Be careful," he warns " don't cut yourself."

Vegas me would have said something snarky and lighthearted but I am almost two and a half thousand miles away from home and I have nowhere to if he takes it the wrong way and this whole thing goes south.

"I'll be fine," I say and leave it at that.

I throw out the pieces and Spencer takes a wet paper towel to the floor to pick up the microscopic shards.

He goes to grab another mug out of the cupboard.

"Would you like some coffee?" he asks "I have other drinks if you don't like coffee, orange juice, milk, water, apple juice-"

"Coffee please," I interrupt as politely as I can. He nods and pours me some.

It smells absolutely amazing, like the stuff we sell in the bookstore's cafe not the stuff that you buy at Truman when it is finals week, you rode the bus to school, and you were just that desperate.

The mug he offers me is a pastel orange one that narrows down at the bottom. I like it, It's warm against my frozen fingers.

"Thanks," I say. He nods.

"So what do you want for breakfast?" he asks.

"I eat toast." I respond.

He looks surprised, whether at my offering of information, the bluntness of my offering, or that I replied without having first heard my options. I'm a big fan of hearing my options before I decide things.

"Okay," he says "that's all?"

I've eaten toast every morning of the last three years ever since Nonna decided that I wasn't allowed to skip breakfast anymore. I barely eat toast.

I don't like eating after I've just woken up, I'm never hungry enough, and then it kickstarts my metabolism later on in the day so I'm starving by noon.

"Yes."

He makes my toast, which again freaks me out a bit because I am, once more, a social trainwreck in the adult department.

Believe it or not I was actually popular back at home, well after freshman year anyway. I was a nerd freshman year, none of my clothes fit, I knew too much about dinosaurs, and I made enemies with the most popular girl in school on accident. Unfortunately her boyfriend was a linebacker with an affinity for throwing people in dumpsters, so I spent a lot of my time in the one behind the Kitchen. And then The Day My Life Fell Apart happened and I went to live somewhere else from February to August, a time from which I emerged four inches taller with boobs and a new makeover, both outer and inner wise. I killed it that volleyball season which earned me a whole lot of points. For most schools, football is the only game that matters, but our team is shit. It's always been shit, but our volleyball team has kicked ass for generations, so volleyball is our sport and I was the star player. The quarterback.

I was a makeup slathered quarterback. I tutored kids so they could make it out. Go to college. Have lives. And I fix things. I'm a fixer. I tried to be nice. I managed to convince people that I am as nice and pretty on the inside as I am on the outside. Kids like pretty things.

Adults are harder to trick into liking you.

Most of them don't like to think of me as a person. I'm just a kid after all and who really cares what I think. They can't be bothered to look past the stereotypes of my generation or where I come from or who my mom is.

You can't even imagine the backlash I got from some of the parents of the kids I've coached when it came out that my mom was a drug dealer, people who had loved me the day before were preaching about how much they knew how I had always been trouble and they couldn't believe that a girl like me was allowed around their children, as if I was passing out free samples of heroin and teaching nine year olds how to shoot up instead of buying them pink solo cups and correction their setting positions.

Adults and law enforcement always seem to hate me on principle. Spencer is an adult and law enforcement and I've been introduced to him using the whole 'Surprise, you have a kid! It's your problem now!' method. He should really hate me.

But here we are, quietly eating breakfast like normal people.

Then again he is FBI. I like FBI. I've wanted to be FBI since I was, like, five. My best friend, Jessie's, dad is FBI, her parents were like parents to me, they were some of the best people I knew. I wanted nothing more than to be just like Mr. Sykes. I think they moved back to Virginia when she died.

Part of me wants to see them again, I was good friends with her twin brother, Chris, and her baby brother, Scotty. I was around them so often Mr. and Mrs. Sykes used to call me their second daughter. I just don't think I could be able to look at them anymore with her gone.

Somehow that hasn't deterred my career path.

I methodically chew through my toast and drink my coffee. Sip of coffee, bite of toast, pause, sip of coffee, bite of toast, pause. I'm sure he's noticed my strange eating habits by the third round but I can't be bothered to care. I need to eat. My body needs fuel. I'm already clinically underweight, less so than I was in November- Post Miller, Pre-Mr. White, but I still need to gain the weight back. I can't just stay like this.

I add up the calories in my head. The average mug holds about 12 fluid ounces which is about one and a half cups. A cup of coffee is only two calories, so that's three, but I had sugar in it. There are forty-eight calories in one tablespoon of sugar, so that's fifty-one. In a piece of white bread there are seventy-nine, so that's 130. I had about two tablespoons of grape jelly on top of the toast, so that's another hundred. Two hundred and thirty calories. Not bad. I usually have a lot more sugar in my coffee, so I went down a lot of calories.

As long as I have 2,000 by the end of the day I'll be fine.

He is watching me eat. He is watching me eat because I eat breakfast like a weirdo, and not the good kind.

Damnit.

He probably thinks I'm anorexic.

Why does everyone think that I'm anorexic?

Because you're skinny, you exercise too much, and you eat like a wack job.

I swear to capital-G God that if he whips out an 'Anorexia and You' pamphlet I am going to lose my shit. I will have a nervous breakdown and have to be committed. It will be ugly.

"So," he begins. Here it comes. "You like 'Star Trek'."

I blink. That I did not see coming.

"Yeah," I say "so do you."

I take another swig of coffee and watch as his eyebrows draw together, he looks like he is trying to figure out if I actually know this or if I'm just guessing.

I swallow. "You have the box sets of Voyager, Deep Space Nine, and Next Gen in your tv stand."

The look of realization.

I pop the last bite of toast into my mouth and down the rest of my coffee.

I have stuff to do today. Research, job hunting, I need find the bank where I transferred my funds, I need to change my phone number.

I did a bunch of school research last night and the only public high school is also a middle school and most of the student population are military brats, probably because Quantico is home to a huge military base. It's small, but the population of Quantico is only 540 people. 541, including me. There are 602,748 people living in Las Vegas at any given time.

"It's so quiet here…" I say absently.

"It's definitely a culture shock." He agrees.

If this was a movie we would totally bond about our shared backgrounds and talk for hours, but this isn't a movie. This is a really warped form of real life.

After a few minutes I wash out my coffee cup and retreat back to my room.

I do get the courage to shower though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this is definitely not my best. It is really stilted but I'm getting massive writers block. As much as I love daughter fics, I, myself, have never written anything like this before, so it's kind of difficult. Once again, please, please, please review. They keep me going. Please inform me of any mistakes.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, sorry. I keep forgetting to mention that this takes place in the beginning-ish of season eight. Morgan and Garcia are back from England and Blake is settling in. I did go back and edit some things. Please keep reviewing.

My shrink's name is Sue, by the way, which is such a shrink name. Well, actually, it is Doctor Sue Andrews, but she tells me to just call her Sue.

I understand that this is to set her on my level, as though to make it easier for me to talk to her.

It is a twisted sort of manipulation, manipulation intended for good, which I can respect.

That, however, does not mean I speak to her at all during my first appointment.

I spend the whole hour staring blankly at her or picking at my fingernail polish.

She spends the hour analysing me and generally attempting to do her job.

I analyse her too, and I'll admit, the lady's got grit. We had an hour long staring contest and she showed no signs of weakness or annoyance.

I can respect that too.

When the clock strikes four I stand up and give her a peppy "See you next Friday!" before flouncing out to the waiting area.

I'm pretty proud of myself and, now that I have established my dominance and she didn't cave to my petty teenage will, I may actually talk to her next week.

I try and make a little noise when I walk into the waiting room, because I have accidently startled Spencer at least four times since I got here six days ago.

Once upon a time, when I was a real girl, I used to do ballet. I hated it, and I only did it for my mother, but it taught me grace and a certain poise that lets me move in almost complete silence. It has served me well thus far, but unfortunately I can't turn it off, so I have terrible habit of appearing out of nowhere and scaring the holy hell out of people.

People back home just got used to it when i was around, but poor Spencer hasn't had enough time to do so, thus falling victim to my ghosting.

I do my best to slap my feet on the ground and drag them slightly on the carpet so that the people in the waiting room can hear me coming. It is effective.

I watch Spencer look up from a large book and scan my face for any signs of distress, profiling my micro-expressions, which I'm sure is going to get annoying at some point, but I push that thought to the edges of my brain.

He seems relieved that I have not dissolved into a puddle of tears.

My mental stability shall live to see another day.

"Hey," he says "How did it go?"

"It didn't suck as much as I thought it would." I reply without thought, momentarily forgetting that he hasn't had the proper amount of time to adjust to my true personality yet. I am best in small doses and that was an exceedingly large dose.

My ears get hot.

"That's good," he says, sounding amused. He stands up and puts his book into his messenger bag so we can leave. I pull on my hat and brace myself for the freezing cold temperatures.

I hate winter.

By the time I stop moving around I begin to notice that he is still nervous looking. It's the way people look at you right before they say "we need to talk."

I try to ignore the fact that now I am also nervous, which leaves two people slightly less mentally stable in the shrink's waiting room than that came in. I watch his hands twist the strap of his messenger bag and realise that we have similar hands with long, slim fingers, though is are more masculine than mine.

All of my life people have been telling me just how much I look like my mother, only lighter. Lighter hair, lighter eyes, lighter expressions.

Looking back on pictures of her at my age, I can see it. We have the same facial structure outside of our eyes. Same mouth, same eyebrows, same slightly upturned nose, but where my features give me a slightly impish look that often gets me labeled as a troublemaker, she always looked defeated.

I assume it's because, at my age she was already pregnant with a fetus she called 'Peaches,' who would eventually become baby Sydney, whom she also called Peaches.

I was told I looked like Maria so much i never really stopped to look for the physical differences between us. I looked like Maria and that was all, but this week I've been comparing myself to the person who unknowingly offered up the other half of my gene pool.

I hate myself for it a little bit every time a thought saying "I'm like that too!" pops up because I've never been that person. I didn't write poetry about my dad lessness, or even really think about it.

And now here I am.

Comparing our hands.

Like a creep.

I look away from him and check the time on my watch like i don't already know what time it is.

"I hope you don't mind," he says "but I have to stop into the office to pick up some paperwork. If that's okay with you?"

Does he want me to come with him? Of course he does, why else would he ask? Maybe he's just trying to be nice?

I give a neutral "Okay." and make whatever decisions that are to be made his problem.

The lobby is almost exactly what I thought it would be; bright, clean, professional. There are a bunch of potted plants- that I'm pretty sure are plastic- are scattered around the room.

Apparently the FBI is all about practical aesthetic.

The floor in front of the door is muddy and wet, which makes me feel less guilty when I watch the snowy sludge shakes loose of my black, suede, wedge booties and slide to the floor.

The janitorial staff might just hate winter more than I do.

Spencer leads me over to a security guard next to a metal detector. I know how this goes so I reach into my purse and pull out my Banksy Zippo, eyeliner, and a little can of mace and drop it into the bowl. The security guard raises an eyebrow and motions me through.

No alarms go off so he prints me out a visitors badge which I pin to the front of my shirt.

Spencer leads me over to an elevator.

"Wait," I say "that's it?"

"Yes?" he says, bemused. I laugh.

"How is it that it's easier to get into a FBI building than it is to get into Truman?" I ask as we start moving up.

"What did you have to do to get into Truman?"

"Identification, Metal detector," I do finger quotes "'random' backpack searches and pat downs, you know, the usual."

He frowns. "That seems a bit extreme."

I stare at him with wide eyes.

"But Spencer, don't you know that teenagers are a dangerous species? Especially from my side of town."

The elevator pings, the door slides open, and the conversation is dropped, but he is still frowning. He doesn't seem upset at me, but, rather, for me.

Weird.

"This is the bullpen,"he says and proceeds to tell me everything they do here while I clasp my hands tightly in front of myself so I don't flip out.

There are desks scattered strategically around the room along with a lot of filing cabinets and drawers. Again with all of the plastic plants. There are what I assume are offices up on a balcony like area above.

A handful of very professionally dressed people move around quickly carrying files and answering phones. One man stands abruptly from his desk and power walks to a room, from which he emerges with a steaming mug of coffee and power walks quickly back to his desk without spilling a single drop.

He is my personal favorite.

I unclasp my hands and swipe them quickly down my button up, black skirt, to get rid of sweat and any wrinkles.

I send a quick thank you to Nonna for her drilling it into my head to always dress nicely when you go to meet someone new, whether you want to or not, otherwise I would be wearing sweats and my game day hoodie right now.

Instead I am wearing my debate clothes that I wore to my last tournament.

I'm wearing a tight shirt with different colored and sized stripes. It feels like a turtleneck, which I hate because it feels like they're choking me, but without the neck part, so it's okay. I have a black jacket over it because there are built in gaps in the shoulders, which is a huge no-no because shoulders are a huge turn on and are very distracting, and it's cold outside. I am wearing my nude tights, which I have a hundred pairs of because it is insanely hard to find them in my skin tone and so when I find them I have to stock up.

Either way it is way nicer than I'm used to dressing, but I suppose it suits me in this situation.

I would give up my jeans, tees, and sneakers in a heartbeat if I could work here. I would give anything to be employed by the FBI.

I follow behind Spencer on the way to, what I assume is, his desk while taking in everything.

I can't believe I'm actually here.

"Hey Pretty boy," a voice came from my left. I whipped around quickly, my braid snapping me in the face.

The man who spoke is tall, dark skinned, and very, very handsome. Not to mention made of pure muscle. He's familiar.

He is one of the people in the picture on Spencer's fridge.

He does a sort of double take when he sees me which tells me that my visit was probably not planned.

He looks quickly at Spencer.

"Is this…?"

Spencer gives him a small nod. "Morgan, this is Sydney, Sydney this is Derek Morgan."

Morgan gives me a large smile that makes the corners of his eyes crinkle up.

His teeth are freaking immaculate, white enough he could put toothpaste models to shame.

"Well, well, well. Baby Reid, it's good to finally meet you."

He sticks out his hand for me to shake. I fight a grimace and take it. His hand swallows mine up and I do not have dainty hands. You cannot play volleyball with dainty hands.

I smile back, flashing my decent but not nearly as amazing teeth. "Thanks. It's nice to meet you too."

He lets go. "So what are you two doing here?"

"We just came to pick up my extra files." Spencer says, gesturing to the folders on his desk.

"Ah," Morgan says, shifting closer to a different desk to lean on, settling in for a long conversation.

"So you're going to be checking in with Hotch?" He asks and before I can register that he is talking about their boss there is a very loud, very high-pitched shriek that has my whole body jerking backward instinctively. It is short lived an followed by a crash.

"Oh, my god!" someone shrieks again, there is a flash of colors and then someone is crushing me with their arms.

My brain starts screaming at me, warning signs flash behind my eyes, alarms blaring the way computers in children's movies do right before they self destruct.

My muscles freeze up, my breathing hitches, and my eyes dart around frantically, trying to figure out what the hell is going on and how to make it stop.

"Oh, my god!" the person says again, less shrieky but still excited. It is a female voice and I can see a bit of long, curled, blonde hair.

She pulls back and plants her hands on my cheeks so I can feel the cool spots where her rings are. She stares directly into my face with a monochrome pink lipstick smile that swallows up her whole face. Her eyes are squinched up behind her green cat eye glasses.

"It's you! You're here!"

The woman with no concept of personal space is very brightly colored. She is wearing a yellow, white, blue, and red dress is patterned like an abstract painting, over it she wears an emerald green sweater and under it she wears purple tights. Her heels have cat faces on the toes. They're cute.

It is a strange outfit but oddly enough she's making it work.

"You're even prettier in person!"

I glance around once more before looking back at her.

My eyebrows draw together. "Uh...thank you?"

"Reid, she has your eyes!" she sang out, looking at him over my shoulder.

Heat crawls up my neck and into my ears as I get steadily less comfortable. I'm glad I can't see his expression.

She hugs me again, repeating how pretty I am.

"Alright Garcia," Morgan says, gently prying her off of me. "Let the girl breathe."

I quickly take a step back trying to get out of arm's reach just incase she decides she wants to get grabby again.

I am not a fan of people touching me without permission, which rare few people have, and hugs are the worst, especially from people I don't know.

I quickly clasp my hands in front of me, squeezing until my knuckles turn white and a little bit of the tension in my body drains away.

Morgan looks at my hands for a moment before looking away with a neutral expression on his face. I should unclasp them but don't because this is how I cope and I need to cope.

"Right!" the woman says, still beaming. "Sorry. I should introduce myself! I am Penelope Garcia, the all knowing goddess of technology and wisdom!" She gives me a rapid little wave.

This lady is jacked up on way too much caffeine, and that's a lot coming from me because I don't caffeine judge.

She doesn't look like any Garcia I've ever met, and I know a lot of Garcias.

"Hi." I say with a little wave, keeping a wide distance between us.

She still seems insanely happy to see me. Nobody is ever this happy to see me, not even my dog. I don't even know this woman. I would definitely remember if I had ever met this woman.

Spencer and Morgan strike up a conversation about something work related where Garcia offers up information and I pretend that I am not absorbing every word they say like a super ernest sponge. I have to choke back a laugh when Garcia calls Morgan a 'statuesque god of sculpted chocolate thunder' and he just rolls with it. It makes me even happier when no one reacts to the description, which implies that this happens on a regular basis.

A truly beautiful relationship.

"Hey, Reid?" a familiar voice asks, causing both Spencer and I to look up to the balcony where it came from. I catch a view of of blonde hair and blue eyes and relax slightly.

It's JJ.

I know her.

She gives me a smile and turns her attention to Spencer.

"Hotch wants to see you in his office," she says "And Garcia, he wants us in the conference room."

I look over at Spencer in concern, hoping I didn't get him in trouble somehow.

"I'll stay with Baby Reid," Morgan announces with another smile, it's infectious so I smile back.

Baby Reid. As the third oldest child in a very big extended family, I never get called baby anything, especially not in a nice way.

I don't hate it.

Garcia, JJ, and Spencer all head to their respective destinations and I am alone with Morgan.

"So Sydney," He begins "How are you liking living with boy genius?'

"It's nice," I say almost immediately "Quiet."

Both of which are true, this is one of the nicest places I've ever lived in- if not the nicest- and it is very quiet. He hasn't yelled at or insulted me once, which is really nice but also unnerving. We never seem to carry conversations either.

It's kind of lonely, if I'm going to be real. I miss my friends even though we talk and text and email every day.

He laughs. "He hasn't bored you to death with statistics yet?"

I don't know how to react to that. On the one hand, it seems like friendly teasing, on the other, names like 'girl genius' and 'whiz kid' and taking digs at my statistics was how assholes would pick on me and the other kids in the old gifted program. I decide to let it go with very little passive aggression.

"No," I say "We don't really talk that much."

He nods "Spence says you're a senior this year, do you know where you want to go to college next year?"

I smirk and raise an eyebrow. "What makes you think I have any intentions of going to college?"

For the briefest of moments he seems startled. His smile wavers and I watch as he tries to formulate a reply.

A laugh flutters up my chest and out of my mouth. He looks at my face with both eyebrows raised.

"I'm messing with you. I'm going to the University of Pennsylvania on a full scholarship, I leave in august."

He laughs too.

"Full ride Ivy league, huh? You must be pretty smart."

I shrug.

"I'm okay. The scholarship is more for brawn than brain, I got it for playing volleyball."

His eyebrows rise once more.

"You still have to be really smart to be accepted into an Ivy league school, and you must be a damn good volleyball player. Is that what happened to your knee?"

"No; actually," My mom's ex threw me down a flight of stairs "I fell down some stairs. Like I said; not all that smart."

I smile and use my 'I'm making fun of myself, it's okay to laugh' tone.

He laughs and I smile. I like making people laugh, and his is really nice.

"Morgan." Another voice comes from the balcony. This one's definitely not JJ, the sound is deeper and stern, like 'ex-drill sergeant' stern.

The voice belongs to a dark haired man in a suit that most lawyers would kill to have with a face that looked like it hadn't smiled in years.

"Hey, Hotch." Morgan said "I was just talking with Baby Reid, here."

"That's fine," Hotch says "I need to see you both in the conference room. Now."

The detention kid in me goes "Ooooh, you in troouubleee," as I get flashbacks to being called to the principal's office. I try and go over everything I've done since I've gotten here while Morgan leads me up the stairs. I can't remember doing anything worthy of a private conference room chew-out. Not that I would know; I'm sure that the rules from the projects of Las Vegas are different that the ones here.

When we get off the stairs I am standing taller than I have in a while, which is what happens when I think that I am in trouble, the body language equivalent of back-sass.

Come at me, I dare you.

Hotch sticks his hand out for me to shake and I do. The handshake dates back to the fifth century greece to assure that the two people making an agreement had no weapons on their arms or up their sleeves. There is no real purpose for it in modern times- outside of tradition -but with this guy it almost seems like he is using it for its original purpose, even though me sleeves are too tight to hide anything in.

"Hello, Sydney," he says with his deep, stern voice "My name is Aaron Hotchner, but you can call me Hotch."

"It's nice to meet you." I say and then both men head off to- what I assume is -the conference room while I follow.

It's an ambush.

There are five adults in the room plus Hotch and Morgan and all of them are looking at me.

Fantastic.

They are all somewhat crowded around Spencer and for some reason it reminds me of show and tell back in kindergarten.

Bring your daughter to work day.

I fight the insane laughter building up in my chest and try to focus.

There are only two people in this room that I haven't formally met yet, an older woman with brown hair and eyes who is throwing out professorly vibes and… Holy shit.

Holy shit.

David Rossi.

That's David Rossi.

You're staring! Stop it! Be cool!

Cool.

Right.

Be cool.

I pull my impassive Las Vegas poker face and look around like I'm bored and my heart isn't trying to slam its way out of my chest.

My eyes land on Penelope who is practically vibrating and looks like she is seconds away from lunging at me again. I lean backwards.

"Uh… Blake, Rossi, this is Sydney, my… daughter."

Oof.

That was rough. I am not looking forward to the first time that I have to introduce Spencer as my dad.

I mean you might as well just tattoo the word 'bastard' onto my forehead. I shift my weight and instantly regret it because that is pretty much a glowing neon sign for 'I am uncomfortable.'

"Uh… hi."

So much for being cool.

"Hello," greets the brown haired woman moving away from Spencer towards me with her hand extended. She gives me a polite smile as I shake her hand.

"I'm Alex Blake."

"It's nice to meet you," I reply with a matching polite smile, a pretty little mask they can all see through.

She lets go of my hand to make room for Rossi who takes my hand in both of his and gives it a shake.

"David Rossi," he says and my soul sets itself on fire.

David Rossi. Is Shaking. My hand.

Is this what it feels like to get a Fields Medal?

No. This is better than a Fields Medal.

This is like shaking hands with a criminal justice god.

Be cool, be cool. Be cool.

"Hello."

Hello? Hello?! That's the best you got, Whiz Kid?

"Syd, here's, been telling me she's a volleyball player. She's going to Upenn next year." Morgan announces sounding almost… proud.

And so the conversation begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy Hell that was long. Sorry it took so long to publish, I had finals last week and I've been trying to adjust to my new classes. I think the next chapter is going to be about school and getting to know Virginia and the like. Please review and give me any ideas you may have I am open to suggestion.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do not own criminal minds. If I did Reid wouldn't be going through all of this shit. *cough* Barnes is a literal piece of shit *cough*. Fair warning; this is pretty much a filler.

The apartment is too quiet.

When Spencer went to work this morning I did not expect it to be this silent. I plug my phone in and try to push the sound of Kurt Cobain's voice through the walls.

Nothing.

I switch between Drake, Tupac, Dr. Dre and all of the other shit that the kids back home used to blast at parties, on the streets, and in their cars. It only makes it worse somehow.

I hate silence like this, cemetery silence.

I sit on my bed for a while and stare blankly at the closed door. I stare for what feels like hours but when I look at the clock has only been four minutes.

Oh, fuck this.

I get up and strip out of my pajamas and swap my sports bra for a real one with wire.

I wiggle into a pair of black tights and jean shorts, before pulling on my mom's old Runaways '76 Europe tour t-shirt while Eminem raps in the background. I straighten the wavy curls out of my hair and braid two tight cornrows into the left side of my head, tying them off just behind my ear.

I spend twenty minutes on my makeup, ten of which is spent on my eyes alone.

When I'm done I pull on my absolute favorite pair of shoes; a pair of 'shattered backboard' Air Jordan 1's that I inherited from my older cousin, Teddy, when he outgrew them. Well, it's more that I grew into them then he grew out of them. Teddy never wore them because they're orange the shade of orange on the shoes hurts his eyes the same way that the shade of green in Spencer's living room hurts mine, so when I got them they were practically brand new.

I dig around in my bracelet collection and come out with the black one with the elephant charm on it that Aunt Ruth sent from New Delhi. I pull it on and stand in front of the full length mirror on the back of the door.

I smile. It is like changing out of work clothes and letting your hair out of a tight bun. "There I am."

I take the bus to the supermarket and grab a basket on the way in. I put in my brand of shampoo, conditioner, and toothpaste into the basket. The travel sizes I packed just aren't cutting it anymore. Then I head over to the baking isles.

Almond flour, confectioners sugar, gel food coloring, cocoa powder, cream of tartar, vanilla extract, cream cheese, heavy whipping cream, butter. I put it all in the basket and check out. Spencer has everything else I need but a sifter, which I can find in any thrift store for much cheaper.

I take the bus back to Spencer's where I put away anything that needs to be refrigerated, but I leave the rest out on the counter. I'll be back before five.

I venture off to find a thrift store and maybe a job. I wonder in and out of shops, buying a mocha at a little cafe, before I wonder into a used bookstore. Bookstores are my home planet with an atmosphere I can breathe in. I scoop up a copy of "The Outsiders" by S.E. Hinton. This book definitely makes my top ten list. I left my copy at home for my sister, we're supposed to start reading it together soon, because she has to do a project on it for school. I have it memorised by now but it would be nice to have another copy. I also pick up a copy of "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison.

I purchase the books and then shove them into my backpack before moving on to the thrift store a couple shops down. After digging around for about ten minutes I leave the store with a somewhat new sifter.

By the time I'm done it's almost eleven thirty, so I decide to only visit a couple more shops and head back. Most of what's left looks like clothing boutiques that are definitely not my style or pay grade.

And then… Spin.

Oh, Spin.

The sign is written in thick, cursive neon. It seems to glow bright even in the daylight. A huge vinyl record slightly overlaps the 'n'.

Oh, I have got to go in there.

I push open the door and the bell chimes alerting a man who looks like a white, hipster Jesus in his mid-twenties. that I have, indeed, arrived.

"Hey," He says, sounding the way I assume White Jesus would sound. "Can I help you with something?"

It is really dead in here but an old song by the Cure is playing softly. The only other person besides me and White Jesus is an elderly hispanic lady in a floor length flowery dress and a shawl. She has to be about eighty and she is sifting through a pile of AC/DC albums carefully. She pulls one out, inspects it, and sets it aside.

I have caught a glimpse of my future.

I smile at White Jesus. "No, thank you. I'm just looking around."

He smiles back at me.

"That's cool," he says "I'm Matt,"

Of course his name is Matt.

"You can just come get me if you need help with anything."

He seems nice, and by nice I mean he isn't hitting on me which is really… nice.

I thank White Jesus and wonder around the shop. There are all kinds of things here. It isn't just records, but CD's, posters, cassettes, music books. There are a couple instruments and record players scattered throughout. The first couple of shelves are all new stuff, the rest is used.

I have a staring contest with a Jimmy Hendrix bobblehead.

I lose.

There is a whole bucket of different colored 45 RPM adapters each for two dollars. I did around and pull out two pink ones for my little sister. I had to leave my records and player at Nonna's but my sister loved using them. Unfortunately, she loved them so much sh lost all of my adapters.

I drift around absently, moving between isles and around displays. Have you ever been in a place and just thought 'I could spend my whole life here'?

That's Spin.

You could spend decades in Spin and never, ever be bored

I could spend decades in this tiny shop and never, ever be bored. That's saying something, I have the attention span of a two year old on crack.

"I weel buy dees one." the hispanic lady sets the AC/DC record on the counter "and dees one." She places a Metallica record on top of the AC/DC on. It has one of the most graphic covers that Metallica ever produced.

White Jesus raises an eyebrow.

"Is this a, uh, gift for somebody?" he asks conversationally.

The hispanic lady looks him dead in the eyes.

"No."

I choke.

Oh, praise Jesus. Praise White Jesus, and Black Jesus, and, my family's favorite, Brown Jesus.

White Jesus is the only one who hears the little noise I make. We make eye contact and, before I duck behind a display with my hand over my mouth, I see it.

White Jesus cracks a smile.

I hold back my laughter until the lady leaves with her obscene Metallica record. As soon as the door closes behind her it pours out so fast and hard, I almost die.

I cannot breathe.

I stumble out from behind the display and put my hands on my knees. I laugh so hard I am worried about the condition of my makeup. White Jesus joins me somewhere in the middle of my laugh fest, so we are both howling in the middle of the empty store.

I almost stop laughing a few times but every time my laughter slows down, the image of that little old lady with the giant crucifix around her neck rockin' out to Metallica, comes into my head and I am back to practically pissing myself.

After several minutes of wheezing we both stop. I straighten up.

"Oh, my God." I say.

"Yeah," he agrees.

I take a few steps up to the counter with my adapters and an Elvis Presley record.

"Okay," I say, catching my breath. "Okay. I would like to buy these."

"Alright," he says, ringing them up. He has to type everything in by hand because there are no barcodes to scan. It takes a while so I look around and behind the counter. Band t-shirts, signed posters and… is that? A help wanted poster?

"I'm sorry. Is that a help wanted poster?" He looks up from typing in the amount.

"Yeah," he says "You lookin' for work?"

"Yeah, actually. Any chance you have any applications?"

"Of course," he replies reaching under the counter and coming out with a sheet of paper. He passes it to me.

I pull a pen out of my pocket and start filing it out.

Name: Sydney Romano-Reid. I make the hyphen extra thick. None of the Romano or Reid shit. It's both. Here, it's gonna be both. Back home it was either or, depending on the neighborhood. East, West, or Cultural Corridor; its Romano. Certain parts of North, all of south, and on the Strip; its Reid.

People pick and choose that culture crap.

Age: 16

Email: SydneyR-R19

I scrawl in Spencer's address and my social security number and previous employers information. I fill in the rest without problem.

"Eight dollars and twenty four cents." he says passing me a bag with all of my stuff in it. I pass him the money and my application.

"Thanks," I smile.

"Mr. Boss Man will read over this when he gets back from lunch. He'll call you to let you know whether or not you got the job."

"Cool. Thank you, Matt"

"You're welcome," He looks at my application "Sydney."

I speed walk back to the apartment more anxious now than I was before.

The first thing I do when I get back is set everything on the table and peel off my jacket. I am left only in my t-shirt and that is how you know shit just got real. I'm almost always in long sleeves for two reasons: one; I'm always cold. I shiver all of the fucking time, it's insane. Two; there is a scar on the side of my wrist that looks weird as hell, all round and curly. It matches the wire stove top in our old apartment (as it should because that's where I got it) and people always think that it's their business to ask about it, which is as annoying as the scar is weird. In other words, short sleeves are a no-go most days.

I scrub my hands down and get to work.

Macaroons are hard to make perfectly, and, if you do it right, they take forever.

At one in the afternoon with four hours to go; they're perfect.

I try to push music through the walls again. It's easier this time. I mix and blend everything until it is in the form of a smooth batter. Macaroons require my full attention, so I don't have to think about my friends, - I put the batter into a frosting tube - or my sister, - I test the tube - or the job application, - I start putting little circles of batter down on the pan - and I definitely don't have to think about the consultation at nonsegregated, uber rich Clayton Prep that Spencer set up for two days from now.

Nope.

Definitely don't have to think about that.

I accidently slam my hand down into a pile of uncooked macaroon goo.

Damnit.

I rinse it off my hand and the pan and redo that one. I keep going until I am out of batter and stuff them in the oven to bake for the next twenty minutes. I don't pause at all before I launch into making the filling. I leave the filling white where I made the cookies purple. I finish the filing just as the timer goes off. I grab a towel and pull the pan out of the oven. They sit on top of the oven until I have cleaned up everything I don't need.

When I' done the cookies are just the right temperature. I pull the filling out of the fridge where I left it when I started cleaning.

It takes another half an hour to fill the macaroons and shove them into a tupperware container.

I bite into one and smile.

It's perfect.

I make sure I don't have anything on me before flopping down onto the couch, still munching. I flip through channels before I landed on the beginning of a Jurassic Park marathon.

Score!

My phone rings.

Nevermind.

"Hello?" I ask, muting the tv.

"Sydney, hi." Spencer says sounding surprised even though he called me.

"Hey, Spencer. What's up?"

I look at the clock. 2:53 in the afternoon. He doesn't get off work for another two hours and seven minutes.

"A case case up in Oklahoma, I have to leave with the team, immediately. I'm sorry."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry that this chapter is so short I just haven't really had time to work on it recently. My dad just lost his job so I am going to have to start picking up more shifts at work to help out. I figured you guys would rather have one short chapter in a month than a really long one in three. Sorry again.


	7. Chapter 7

Wednesday dawns with rising anxiety on my part and, judging by last nights phone call, Spencer’s. Apparently Oklahoma is not as wholesome and naive as the pamphlets and republicans would make it seem because the team has yet to return. Spencer isn’t offering information, and I’m not about to ask. The last thing I need is for him to think I’m some sort of serial killer groupie. He sounded genuinely distressed that he couldn’t be here for me on my interview. I tried offering some reassurances but the words didn’t seem to do much. I’m not very good at reading people over the phone, but his guilt was practically tangible. I don’t know why he feels so bad, I mean, we barely know each other.   
Then again, maybe that’s why he feels so bad.   
Either way his self assigned culpability has not worked out from me. On the one hand I do not have to take the bus to Clayton, because Spencer arranged a ride for me. On the other hand, that ride was arranged with the sole member of the team still in the state. The living embodiment of human excitement wrapped in rainbows and glitter; Penelope Garcia.   
The icing on top of the cake of getting repeatedly punched in the face with Brand New Things that has been the last several weeks. The cherry on top of the face punch cake was her happily screaming ‘Girls’ Day!’ through the phone directly into my ear. Because this day cannot get anymore nerve wracking.   
I wallow in silence at the kitchen, nursing coffee for a few hours. I got up way to early for the interview, which isn’t until ten, I’ve been up since six.   
I glance quickly at the clock.   
9:24.   
Garcia should be here any minute.  
I smooth out the folds of my skirt for the billionth time. Virginia is seriously putting a strain on my wardrobe. I only own two skirts and I wore the other one the first time I met Garcia. Wearing it twice in a row would be weird. As unconventional as Garcia is, I want her to like me.   
What happened to not caring about what other people think?  
I brush the thought off, straightening the collar of the white button up hidden under my red sweater. I’m not supposed to care what people think of me. I am self assured, I am confident, I am a very good actress. I am put together, cracks sealed with the strongest of very super super glue. Who cares what anyone thinks of me? Opinions are varying and fleeting. Time is a human construct. We are all just sentient specks of dust floating in infinite space sowhoreallycaresaboutanythingatall-  
Stop.  
Breathe.   
I continue inhaling until it feels like my lungs will explode and then let it go. I move around the kitchen in silence, rinsing off my mug and plate before putting everything away and go to pace the apartment for several minutes.   
After a multitude of decades someone knocks on the door in a quick, happy pattern.   
I figure that it’s safe to assume Garcia has arrived.  
I look out the peephole anyway, catching sight of increasingly familiar blonde curls.  
I let go of another breath and pull open the door   
“Hey, Penelope.” I greet, mustering up as much energy as I can manage.  
“Please, Munchkin. My friends call me Garcia, and you are nothing if not a friend.”   
Alright. That was a really sweet thing for a sentient speck of dust in infinite space to say. And she hasn’t tried to maul me yet, though she looks like she wants to. There is a slight chance that I might live to see tomorrow.   
She grabs both my hands in hers and swings them slightly outward like she is trying to get a good look at me.   
“Oh, aren’t you just cute as a peach? Today is going to be great!”   
She tugs me happily out the door and down the stairs without anymore conversation.

Garcia has the most beautiful orange Cadillac that I have ever seen in my life, and my favorite uncle, Tony, owns a salvage yard on the edge of the Mojave so I’ve seen a lot of Caddies.   
Garcia must see my eyes widen.   
“You like? I named her Esther.”   
I nod my head.  
“She’s beautiful. 1975 Eldorado?” I tug absently on one of my ringlets.   
She grins at me, completely unsurprised about my vehicular knowledge, which, admittedly, is really refreshing.  
“Beauty, brains, knowledge of the classics. Your boyfriend must adore you.   
I grimace as I pop the door open and climb into the passenger seat.   
“I...uh...I’m actually not that into boyfriends.”   
She nods sagely.  
“Girlfriends then?”  
I shake my head.   
“Not really, no. I just don’t date.”   
I do date. Just not often and not for long because I hate it. The whole process, the choosing and the touching, and the kissing, has yet to make sense to me.   
Besides Hollis is the resident gay of our friend group.  
“Understandable,” She agrees “dating is a hassle.”   
My lips pull up at one side and I glance at her from the corner of my eye. This is the most pessimistic I’ve ever heard her sound. She almost seems like an actual human being with real problems.   
And this is starting to sound like its bordering on girl talk. I can girl talk like a champ.  
“You sound like you speak from experience.”   
She brakes at a red light and rolls her eyes good naturedly.  
“ Unfortunately. Men are a hassle.”   
Now, ain’t that the fuckin’ truth.  
I nod in agreement.   
“On to brighter topics! How are you feeling about the interview?”   
My nose scrunches up involuntarily.  
How this is a brighter topic, I fail to understand, but I roll with it. This one isn’t a profiler. This one can be lied to.  
“I’m pretty excited. Clayton seems like a really good school.”   
Clayton is a good school. The best in the district.  
Unfortunately, Clayton is also a private school, and I do not have a good track record with private schools. Being poor in a private school is hard. Being not-white in a private school is hard. Being poor and not-white in a private school, a private high school at that, sucks massively.   
The equipment and up to date textbooks aren’t worth ‘Greaser*’ referring to me more than my real name and teachers thinking I plagiarized my essays for using the word ‘hence.’   
Say what you want about Truman, say what you want about the drugs, and the sole microscope that doesn’t even work, and the teachers that don’t care.  
You wouldn’t be wrong.   
But at least at Truman everyone was on the same hood rat playing field.   
“I mean, it’s a high school,” I amend, earning a hot pink grin “But it has a good academics program. And my friends think the uniform is just hilarious.” 

Garcia and I sit on the fancy leather benches in the office outside of the headmaster’s office (apparently headmasters are a real thing outside of Hogwarts, who knew) surrounded on all sides by plastic plants, which is okay for a government building but seems superfluous for a high school. So does the the fact that the headmaster has his own secretary who answers phones for him and says “Headmaster Abram will see you soon,” rather ominously, making me feel like I’m living in the first five minutes of an episode of ‘Supernatural.’   
From what I can tell, Garcia doesn’t need to be here. The website says that interviews here are student led as to make potential students more comfortable or whatever, but I have to meet the principal first. My transcripts and important papers are all in a folder in my backpack just in case, even though I’m sure that Spencer has already sent everything over, but I am a big believer in being extra prepared. Spencer seems to really want me to go here and the last thing I want is to be a disappointment just because someone lost the paperwork necessary for me to attend. 

Eventually a portly man with the face of a feral racoon opens the door of the office. He looks at his watch and calls out my name sounding rather annoyed as though I’m the one who is fifteen minutes late.   
Ah. So this is how it’s gonna be.   
I rise off the bench and smooth out my skirt.   
“Present.”   
He turns his gaze off the secretary and looks me in the face, lips pursed. Everything about his facial and body language is haughty. The ‘chin-up-forehead-back’ position of his animal face and the slight narrowing of his beady eyes indicates a huge superiority complex. I look directly in his eyes and flick my eyebrows slightly upward, not one for being submissive. He breaks eye contact and looks at Garcia. His eyes go from her pink pumps to the the feathery blue headband placed carefully on her blonde curls. I watch his eyebrows go together and his top lip flatten in poorly disguised disgust.   
I clench my jaw.   
Garcia might not be my absolute favorite person but that doesn’t mean that I am going let this dude be a complete ass to her.   
Besides, I like the way she dresses, displaying total confidence. I know no matter how happy and childish she seems, she’s not stupid enough to not notice no one else quite matches her.   
In layman's terms; Garcia don’t give a fuck about what other people think. He nods sharply once before folding his hands behind his back.  
“Ah, yes. Sydney, come in.” He gestures towards his office, purposefully only regarding me.   
This’ll be great.   
I saunter past him confidently, doing what I do best: subtly pissing people off and giving them no discernible reason to feel that way.  
If I don’t get in to Clayton it will be just one more disappointment in a long history of disappointments; at least I won’t be a dick.  
I sit down in one of the open chairs.  
He shuts the door behind us with a sharp click and sits in a large office chair on the opposite side of his desk.  
“We usually like for the parents to be here to deal with paperwork, but seeing as your father can’t attend…” He trails off with a sigh leaving the ‘I guess you’ll have to do’ unsaid. His voice sounds like Spencer’s not being here has wasted his oh, so valuable time. Like Spencer was just too lazy to show up.  
I cross my knees and lean forward slightly.   
“It was my understanding that the paperwork was already taken care of.”   
He blinks at me.   
“Well, yes. It should be here somewhere.” He looks around at the mess that is his desk.   
Are you always this ill prepared or is it because I don’t have a parent with me?  
He paws through the miscellaneous papers for a moment.   
“Julian must have misplaced them.”   
I fight a snort and try to be civil.   
He presses a button on the intercom.  
“Julian where did you put Ms. Reid’s papers?”   
He releases the button.   
There is a scratchy click.   
“I gave them to you this morning, sir.”   
He looks about ready to argue before I cut him off.  
“I have my own copies you can use until you find the others. And its Romano-Reid.” I reach into my Cooperative Ivy backpack and pull out a blue folder.   
“Pardon me?” he asks as I hand him the folder.   
I raise my eyebrows and speak slowly.   
“My name? You called me ‘Ms. Reid.’ My name is Sydney Romano-Reid.”   
“Okay.” he says, like it isn’t important and I shouldn’t have corrected him.   
He glances through my papers quickly before pressing the intercom button again.   
“Julian, call Samantha Ramsey down to the office please.”   
I can’t say who Samantha Ramsey is or what she has to do with my paperwork, but I don’t ask.   
He eyes the folder carefully.   
“Your transcripts are satisfactory.” He says mildly.   
I have a 4.6 GPA and I have been taking dual credit college classes since I was twelve, but sure, make it sound like I’m passing with B’s.   
He frowns.   
“You have more than enough credits to graduate.”   
“I’m aware.”  
He glares over at me.   
“So why haven’t you?”   
It’s a good question, but it’s not really his business and he’s grating on my nerves. I try to formulate a reply that won’t make him immediately toss my application, but it takes a moment to sift through the piles if ‘none of your damn business’ and ‘mouth breather’ that my brain keeps supplying me with.   
A scratchy click interrupts my decision.   
“Mr. Abram, Samantha Ramsey is here to see you.” 

As it turns out Samantha Ramsey is a soft faced girl, with butterscotch colored hair, and eyes like liquid silver. When her eyes settle on me, the slightly hopeful look on her face falls only to be replaced by what can only be described as disappointed apprehension.   
What is with people being so afraid of me at first sight?   
I might be six feet tall in these boots but once again I’m underweight and any muscle I have is well hidden under layers of clothes. I do not look like I am capable of bodily takedowns.   
She introduces herself with her shoulders slumped.   
“My name is Samantha, but everyone calls me Sammy,” she says “I’m your peer guide.”   
“Do you like being called Sammy?”   
“Excuse me?”  
“Just because everyone calls you something doesn’t mean you like being called that.” I point out.  
“Yes. I like being called Sammy.”   
I nodd absently.   
“Cool. My name is Sydney, people call me Syd.”   
She looks a me full on for the first time since Headmaster Muskrat introduced us and raises her curved eyebrows.   
“Do you like being called Syd?”   
“I like it better than Sydney.” I retort.   
She moves her head in understanding.   
“Okay, Syd, why are you changing schools in the middle of January?”   
We walk down a hall past a few classrooms, I peer discreetly through the small windows on the doors. Some hold on going classes and others have teachers eating their lunches in Solitude.   
I knew this question was coming. I spent quite a while trying to come up with a reply that doesn’t make me feel weird, before concluding that that isn’t actually possible. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t replies that won’t make other people feel weird.   
“I moved in with my…. Dad.”   
Just because I thought the word through in the most clinical way possible and as much as I have tried to distance from myself from the situation, using it still freaks me out.   
“Oh,” she says “Are your parents divorced?”  
No, actually. My dad knocked up my mom when they were sixteen during spring break, and then went back to college. She then decided that the most reasonable course of action was to never speak to him again, let alone inform him that I exist. Then, just to thicken the plot, she finally told him, via social services, but only after the arrest that she richly deserved. Now I am here, in some twisted soap opera, existing as the biracial love child of a cocaine dealer/addict and an FBI agent.   
Wow.   
Probably shouldn’t say that out loud.   
“Something like that.”


	8. Chapter 8

Ferret headed headmaster aside, Clayton is a beautiful school. Everything inside seems to be brand new and the best in their class. One of the computer labs, because apparently you need more than one, has Apple desktop computers. The ones with the touch screens? I accidently brushed one with my sleeve and felt myself go into debt. There were about twenty of them in the small room, all new. I estimated that the computers alone in this room $38,970 and some change, which could pay for my sister to go to school through high school and cover all of her dance classes between now and graduation, and still have several grand leftover.   
And that is only one computer lab.   
I try not to be angry and keep my breathing even as I answer the stupid questions that Sammy continues to ask.  
“Why did you decide to apply to Clayton?”   
“My...dad wants me to go here.”   
Her eyebrows furrow at my unsatisfactory answer.   
“Your father wanting you to come here won’t get you through the school year, trust me.”   
I quickly take a breath.   
“I know I sound ungrateful, and I don’t mean to, I swear. This is just really overwhelming. My old school was… nothing...like this.”   
I take a deep, shaky breathe.   
“We got the decade old Bytespeeds when the other high school decided they were unusable. Truman is packed past capacity by four hundred and thirty-six kids. We eat ‘lunch’ at nine in the morning everyday because there isn’t enough room in the cafeteria to fit even half of us.” I look around and gesture inside an empty classroom.   
“You have so much. I just… I don’t…”   
Maybe this is too much.   
I wanna go home.  
I want Sebby to pick me up from Nonna and Gramp’s place. I wanna listen to his loud blairy rap music and press my fingers into the speakers in his Tahoe until I can feel the beat in my bones. I wanna pick up Jordyn and Leo and Aybee and Hollis. I wanna laugh into into Aybee’s stupid camera that she’s carried around since the first day of Freshman year. I wanna help with her documentary and I wanna get iced coffee at Gully’s through the drive through where we get four black, three white, and mine pale blue, a stupid joke that never fails to make me smile. I want to share the reject box from the bakery for breakfast with my best friends. I wanna meet up with April, Hollis’ girlfriend, Brynn, Sebby’s girlfriend, and Alex, Aybee’s boyfriend in the cafeteria. I want them to jokingly call us the ‘hexagon’ so I can say that if they are going to tease us then they don’t get any of the leftover pastries and I will drink all of their coffee. I wanna groan my way through first period health (drugs are bad, have sex you’ll die) and laugh with Hol during AP Lit. I wanna paint Jordyn’s nails in calculus and team up with Leo in advanced shop and autobody. I wanna enjoy AP French and make Mr. Brunner uncomfortable by sitting in Sebby’s lap in AP Psych. I wanna pick my baby sister up from school and watch her talk about her day. I wanna walk my dog.  
I want to go home. 

My eyes start to sting and my stupid ears start to get hot and my face burns. It’s ridiculous. I am on the verge of tears because this stupid school has stupid plastic plants and working computers. I need to grow the hell up.   
This situation isn’t ideal for anyone. I’m sure that Sammy would rather be in class, Garcia would rather be at work, and Spencer would rather have his house to himself again. We all have places we’d rather be but there isn’t anything anyone can do so here we are.   
I push the sleeved heels of my hands into my eyes and scrub downwards.  
Get it together, you brainless wimp.   
“I am so sorry. This is a terrible interview. I’m not usually this stupid, I swear.”   
She sets one of her hands on my shoulder and I fight every urge to flinch away as far as humanly possible.   
I hatehatehate people touching me.   
She’s trying to be nice. She’s trying to be nice.   
“You don’t sound stupid, this is just a lot to take in.”   
Liar.  
I take another deep breath and straighten up. I lift my arms in a surrender motion and shake my head from left to right rapidly before lowering them again.  
“I’m sorry. I’m okay now. Do you have any other questions for me, or should I just go so you can get back to class?” Her hand falls away and all I feel is relief.   
She shakes her head calmly at me.   
“The interview isn’t over. Unless you don’t want to continue?”   
I shake my head even harder.   
“No, no seriously. I’m fine. Onward with the preguntas.”   
She laughs.   
“Okay, so, what are some accomplishments you have earned in your high school career so far?” 

I am much more stable by the time we make it back to the front office, which Sammy let slip is known as ‘the Den’ by the students because it is home to Headmaster Abrams, who as been dubbed ‘The Badger’ by the entire student body.  
Apparently I’m not the only one who thought he had the face of a night creeper. This improves my mood to the point where we are giggling- giggling!- as we walk back. She seems to have warmed up to me after my nervous breakdown in the hallway.   
“All in all, I think this went rather well,” she vocalized earning some disbelief from me. “I think you would make a good addition to Clayton Academy. The admissions board decides whether or not you get in, but they usually take what I say into account.”   
The fist in my stomach unclenches slightly.  
“For real?” I gasp “Oh my god, thank you.”   
She gives me a quick smile. 

Once upon a time, when I was a real girl, I had crazy long hair. Down to my waist at least. Not of my own choice really, but because the women born into my family aren’t allowed to cut our hair outside of the occasional trim. My great-grandmother, GrandMary, grew up romani in the midst of fascist Italy in World War Two. Her mother Lavinia (my middle namesake) cut off she and her daughter’s long, gypsy hair to try and protect them.  
It didn’t work.   
When the war ended GrandMary refused to cut her hair, a rule she passed on to Nonna, who passed it on to Maria, who passed it on to me and Nico.   
About a week after I stopped being a real girl, I took a pair of sewing shears to my thick, brown curls. I did it so jaggedly that, by the time Hollis fixed it, it only went down to my chin.  
And it was almost liberating; under all the shame and regret, like when you’re underwater for a long time and you finally break the surface and get a cool, clean breath of air before being pulled down again.   
My family is the water I drown in.  
It broke Nonna’s heart, my aunts didn’t know what to say to me, even Maria noticed. I feel the need to point out that Maria has made an olympic sport out of actively ignoring me. She didn’t notice when I didn’t come home for two months and is still under the firm belief that I am fourteen years old.   
Nico, my wonderfully real baby sister, just touched my hair and frowned because we didn’t match anymore.   
It’s hard to argue with the practicality of my breakdown, though. Especially on days like today, where it is raining hard enough to soak you to the bone the moment you step outside.  
In January.  
The rain is so thick it flattens my neat ringlets and plasters them to my forehead and neck in a matter of seconds.  
“Ohh.” Garcia says, making a strange squeaky sound as the freezing water lands on her head, giving her best attempts to run in four inch heels through the ice, snow, and puddles of water. I keep a quick pace beside her, tugging at my collar, which is quickly becoming one with my skin. The tips of my fingers sting angrily while my cheeks and nose go numb.  
It’s hard to believe we’re in the double digits.  
After about five minutes in the rain we finally make it to the Caddy, drenched enough I leave a huge puddle on her leather interior.   
Garcia blasts the hot air and shakes her head rapidly, flinging water everywhere. My teeth chatter and I can feel my old fractures start to ache, knee locking up.  
“Where is your coat?!” she shrieks at me, realising for the first time that I’m not wearing anything thicker than a sweater.  
“I don’t...I don’t h-have one.” I grit out as best I can.  
She frowns slightly and turns up the heat again.   
“We have got to get you into some dry clothes.”

Blessed be the furnace, so much better in the apartment than it is in the car. I kick off my shoes as soon as I get through the door. Garcia stayed in the parking garage for a bit, banishing me to the indoors to change while she gets whatever it is she wants from the trunk of her car. I quickly peel off my sweater and tights on the way to my room leaving damp marks in the shape of my feet trailing after me. The prints on my left side smudge thanks to my increasing limp. I remember when I used to like when it got cold. I remember when I thanked the gods for rain. It’s getting harder and harder to appreciate a good thunderstorm as the years go on.   
I hang my sopping wet clothes from the side of my hamper and dig through my drawers. I drag a pair of black leggings over my clammy skin and pull my game day sweats over the leggings. Ankle socks make it onto my feet before being covered with longer ones (one with the pattern of a blue crayon, the other a green crayon). I shove my hands between my thighs for a minute before wringing my kinking hair out into my dirty laundry and tying it up into a sloppy bun. I change my bra into something that doesn’t feel like a just used bikini. Next is a UPenn t-shirt and, finally, Sebby’s UNLV* hoodie that I may or may not have stolen like a jealous ex-girlfriend who refuses to give you your stuff back. It’s about four sizes too big for me and still manages to smell like his Old Spice. It’s comforting.   
I pickup my package of makeup remover wipes and limp my way to the bathroom, foot dragging slightly.   
I look in the mirror just enough to know that I look like complete and utter shit. For one, I made the unfortunate mistake to wear mascara that isn’t waterproof. I look like the illegitimate child of a cheap knock off version of the ‘Applause’ album cover where they couldn't afford primary colors and a strung out raccoon. I wipe away the remains of silent film Lady Gaga off my face to make room for freckled raccoon.   
This is what I get for buying three dollar setting spray from Walgreens.   
“ALL RIGHT MUNCHKIN ARE YOU READY FOR GIRLS DAY!?” Garcia yells through the apartment followed by some crunching and banging noises.  
Jesus Christ, she sounds like she’s planning a UFC fight and I’m not really in the mood to kickbox right now.   
I lurch my way out of the bathroom and towards the noise where Garcia has dumped several reusable grocery bags of stuff on the couch. She rummages through them with her back to me.   
“Is there anything more feminine than having a movie marathon in comfy clothes and pigging out on junk food?” She asks me turning around with a handful of movies in one hand and a box of Whoppers in the other.   
I smirk. “Absolutely nothing.”   
She grins at me. “Are you hungry? I’m feeling chinese.”   
I move forward awkwardly to see what movies we’re watching.   
“Chinese sounds great.”


	9. Chapter 9

The door is open. The door should not be open. I wind my lanyard up and round my arm to grip my pepper spray, wishing for the billionth time that I had a phone; even a burner. I climb the three stairs and pull open the screen door as quietly as I can.  
My heart beats rapidly in my chest. I go over everyone who might have a key in my head. Nonna and Gramps don’t get off work for another six hours. Nico is still at school, along with all of the cousins except me, Teddy, Asher, and Andy. The unfortunate members of the Romano clan enrolled at Truman High School. Teddy went home with his dad, Asher and Andy went to the park to play basketball with some of the other dude-bro’s,   
I am the only other person with a key.  
God I hope someone got sick.   
The kitchen is empty, as is the dining room. GrandMary’s good china is still in the cupboard. The only silver my family has managed to retain is in the drawer.   
“Hey, Peaches.”   
I jump a solid three feet in the air and whirl around, aiming my pepper spray to where the voice came from.   
“Whoa, easy there Killer.” Maria says, grinning. “It’s just me.”   
My mother almost never smiles at me, but when she does it’s hard to breathe, like when I fell of the monkey bars onto my back in elementary school, except for the little fluttery tingle in my chest that feels like hope.   
“Maria,” I breathe and her nose twitches, smile fading slightly. She’s glowing. She actually looks healthy. Maybe this time-  
STOP. This happens sometimes and you know how it always ends, so stop.   
“You scared me.”  
“Sorry,” she laughs “what are you doing out of school?”   
What are you doing out of the crack den?  
“Bomb threat,” I mutter, tucking my lanyard back into my backpack pocket. “They had to let us out early.”   
She shakes her head as she turns her back to me and goes for the fridge.   
“That school,” she sighs “I swear.”   
I fight the urge to remind her that it is her fault I go there. I’m getting more and more bitter towards her since The Day My Life Fell Apart and all of the events following. Including, if not especially, the fact that she is back in maternity clothes again.   
I can’t afford another fucking mouth to feed, not that she cares.   
My hands clench into tight fists at my sides. I need to leave. It takes a minute to fight the rising tide of anger and remember why I came.   
“Have you seen Georgia?” I question. She is usually all over me before I can even get in the door but I haven’t heard a peep from her. Maybe she’s sleeping.   
Maria winces.  
“She wouldn’t stop barking at me so I put her in your room.”   
Good girl.   
I wonder if she is even bothered by the fact that our apartment is so unlivable and she so irresponsible that her children have their own room at her parents house. Probably not.  
“She needs a walk.” I say, moving down the hall to my room, an attempt to escape this conversation.   
She wants something. She only pays attention when she wants something.  
No dice. She follows me.  
Closely.   
“Can I come? I could use a walk too.”   
I pause in front of my door, hand on the knob while I try to swallow the knot in my throat.  
I inhale.  
“It’s chilly.” I say, pushing the door open. Walking Georgia is my only quiet time in the day when I can think by myself. Georgia is my peace. Maria is the reason I need peace.   
“I have a jacket,” she deflects.  
Georgia goes nuts as soon as she sees Maria, barking and growling like a Rottweiler- well seasoned in dog fighting- instead of a Boston Terrier- yippy and spoiled. I crouch down and scratch her gently behind the ears. She quiets, still keeping her distance with Maria.   
She might be a runt, but she is a good girl and smart as hell. I pull her leash off the closet door and link it around her collar ring while Maria keeps babbling.   
“And maybe we could make our way to Gully’s? The baby’s been making me crave pancakes.”   
The baby.  
Little fucking wage monster.   
Maria.   
Big fucking wage monster.   
“I don’t have any cash.” My voice is made of steel.   
Of course she wants something, of fucking course.  
“You don’t need it. I’m buying.”  
I snort. “With what?”   
“Got a bonus from the bar.”   
“You should save it for the baby.”  
Her left hand moves to rest on the growing bump in her abdomen.  
“What I eat the baby eats.”   
I grimace. She has a point but so do I. She could buy groceries with that money, formula, diapers, passies, clothes. She doesn’t want to buy anything until we know the gender but she isn’t saving any money to buy stuff with. Babies are expensive and we don’t have a Michael to pay for stuff this time. All we have is me.  
I open my mouth to argue again.  
“Please, Peaches.” She sighs, looking at me like she did when I was little and she was actually hurt when I got upset at her.  
“I’m really trying here.”   
Her accent is showing. She hates her accent. It only shows up when she’s feeling emotional. I only get like that when I’m really mad.   
Guilt. How does she always manage to make me feel guilty?  
I peer up at her through my hair.  
Don’t do it, Syd.   
“Okay.”   
She beams; glowing.   
My heart twists.  
God do I want that smile. 

Time skips forward quickly and before I know it we are sitting across from each other in a booth at Gully’s and Rosie is setting food in front of us. Gully’s has been my favorite restaurant since I was a kid and Maria worked here once upon a time. I know all of the wait staff by name, but Rosie used to babysit me.   
She slides a plate of pancakes and practically burned bacon in front of Maria, and winks as she slides a slice of peach pie with whipped cream to me.   
Maria grins.  
“What happened to only eating that on your birthday?”  
My mom nicknamed me peaches before I was born because I was the size of a peach when she found out she was pregnant. I had been cooking for fourteen weeks. I could squint, and frown, and suck my thumb in utero. I also could make my mom crave peaches like crazy. Canned peaches, fresh peaches, peach cobbler, peach pie, peach cookies, peach soda, the smell of peaches and cream lotion, everything peaches. She would whisper the story to me in the night when we lived in Boston, sleeping in her ‘87 Nova on the back bench.   
Every year on my birthday, no matter how poor we were, we would split and order of peach ice cream from Toscanini’s and she would hug me and ask “Where would I be without you, Peaches?” and I would say “Lost, Mommy,” like she taught me to.   
God if she only knew. If I only knew.   
“It is my birthday.” I whisper, barely audible.   
She chews up a hunk of pancake and swallows.   
“What?”   
“Its December fourth. Today is my birthday.”   
I watch her open and close her mouth like a goldfish for a solid minute as she tries to figure out something to say. The poisonous vines that have been growing in the pit of my stomach stretch up and curl their way around my heart and lungs, reaching for my throat. They want out. They want to see the sun.   
“Oh, God, Peaches,” she gasps “I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I forgot.”   
“I can,” I snap, releasing the vines. “Because you forgot last year, and the year before that, and the year before that, and every year since Nico was born. I don’t think you’ve ever remembered one of hers.”   
She looks at me with tears in her soil colored eyes and ducks her head. For a split second guilt blooms like flowers on my vines. I hate myself a little bit more.   
I can’t stay. I don’t want to stay. Sebby, and Hol, and Aybee, and Jordan, and Leo. They are waiting for me. We have plans for my birthday. They remembered.   
“I need to go.” I stand, pushing away my food.   
Her head snaps up suddenly, eyes sharp, a clear, pink handprint on her cheek. Blood starts streaming into my eyes and down my chin, my ribs feel like someone set them on fire. I can’t breathe.   
She lunges at me, fingernails of glass digging into the back of my neck. I try to lurch back but I can’t get away. She won’t let me go.   
“I will never let anyone else have you.” 

He woke up to the sound of Sydney’s cell phone trilling followed by a thud and a faint yelp. He rubbed at his eyes and looked at the clock. 3:17 in the morning. He had been asleep for two hours.   
“Whathappened? Waz wrong? Who’s in jail.” He heard Sydney slur tiredly. There was a silent pause followed by a sigh.   
“It’s three in the morning, Michael, somebody best be in jail.”   
Another pause.   
“Well, does she have a fever?”   
“She only gets like this when she has a fever.”   
“I don’t know why, Michael.”   
A hint of annoyance was creeping into her voice.   
“Did you even look at the binder? I didn’t put it together for the fun of it or to just be superfluous, Michael Taylor. I did it because I’ve looked after her for ten years and now nobody else seems to know what to do.”   
“Clearly you don’t, or else you wouldn’t be calling me right now.”  
It didn’t take a profiler to sense the emotion there.   
“Just put her on the- Hey, Sissy!”   
And just like that, all traces of annoyance; gone.  
“Of course I wasn’t sleeping. You know I’m basically nocturnal.” She lied.   
“Your dad says you had a bad dream. Is he checking your temperature like I asked?”   
“101.3 huh? That sucks, baby. At least you get to ditch school tomorrow. Can you put your dad on the phone for a minute?”   
There was another pause.   
“Ok Michael, she has kids ibuprofen in the box, she takes two tablets every four hours but you have to swap between the tablets and the liquid tylenol, that one is two and a half teaspoon. All of the doses are written in the binder, which you will hopefully consult this time. It’s one at home so she takes tylenol at five. She also needs to get into a tank top and a pair of shorts and she only gets one blanket, she’s gonna be pissed but thats how its gotta be unless you want her to get worse. If her fever isn’t down by three tomorrow, take her to the clinic. If you forget any of this, its in the binder. Ok?”   
There is a longer pause.   
“Ok, put her back on.”   
“Hey babes, I’m back. Are you okay?” 

“I’m cold.” Nico sobs over the phone and my heart twists.   
“I know, Sissy. I’m sorry.” I apologize pathetically. “I’m going to change so we can match okay?” I pull myself up off the floor with a wince. The tv is off, along with all of the lights except a lone lamp. Garcia and her bags of stuff are nowhere to be found. Someone covered me in a blanket at some point in the night though. My heart grows a full size.   
I wrap the blanket around my shoulders and make my way to my bedroom, passing the entry way where Spencer’s shoes are sitting. He must have gotten back while I was sleeping. A quick flash of fear darts through my stomach. I am not supposed to get caught in the living room, especially not doing something as completely defenseless as sleeping. Anything could have happened.   
I shake it off.  
“One second, okay?” I say, setting the phone down and peeling off the sweats. I pull on a tank top and shorts and pick the phone back up.   
“Now we match.”   
I sit on my bed and lean against the wall.   
“How are the twins and the Stepmonster?”   
Nico’s dad got remarried last year, a year after the divorce was finalized and Maria had her last child. Michael went on to have two more kids, Simon and Alice, who are currently two months old with his Brand New Wife, Grace. Nico was devastated when they finally got divorced and has hated Grace for the three years that she’s been dating her dad. It’s ordinary I suppose. Grace really isn’t a monster, though. She’s actually quite sweet, truly. A stay at home mom who has fresh baked cookies made every time I drop Nico off. She beams at me as though we are the absolute best of friends.   
“Oh, thank you sweetheart.” she says every time I drop Nico off.   
“I made you both some cookies, do you need any help with your homework, Nicoletta?”   
That is one annoying thing about Grace, she does not believe in nicknames. It’s not Sy, it’s Simon. It’s not Ali, its Alice. It’s not Mike, it’s Michael. It’s not Syd, its Sydney. It’s not Nico, it’s Nicoletta. No matter what anyone says.   
So of course Nico insists on only using nicknames  
“Sy and Ali cry all of the time.”   
“They’re babies. Babies cry.”   
“They’re annoying.”   
I snort.   
“God, I wonder what it could be like to have an annoying younger sibling.”   
“Ha.” she snaps.  
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”   
She yawns causing me to yawn.  
“All right, Neeks. Time for bed.”   
“We haven’t read yet.”   
I frown. She’s right. We read together every night, just like we have for her entire night, but I fell asleep before we could.   
“Alright, keep going with The Outsiders?”   
“No.”  
We finally finished A Series of Unfortunate Events yesterday. We’ve been trying to figure out what to read next, A Wrinkle in Time, the Star Girl series , or Harry Potter.   
“Harry Potter is the only one I have memorized.” I point out.  
“Okay.” She agrees.   
“Are you lying down?” I ask. She always falls asleep at some point while I’m reading.   
“Yeah.”   
I take a deep breath and begin.   
“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say the they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is to make up for the angst and forever wait you guys always have to deal with. How do I reward you? More angst. Duh. I am loving the reviews please send me more because I am an attention whore and it builds up my motivation. I love you all. Thanks!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok guys. This is the beginning of why this story is rated M. There are a lot of triggers in this chapter. Please read note carefully. Trigger warnings: Brief mentions of self harm (no one actually does it), Mentions of suicide (No one actually does or attempts it), mentions of abuse, actual scene of abuse (Nothing graphic, mostly yelling), anxiety. IF YOU ARE TRIGGERED EASILY DO. NOT. READ. I CAN AND WILL SUMMARIZE THE CHAPTER FOR YOU IF YOU PM ME. YOUR SAFETY IS SO IMPORTANT TO ME, DO NOT PUT YOURSELF IN DANGER. SUICIDE AND ABUSE HOTLINE NUMBERS WILL BE LISTED BELOW.

I’m chilling in Shrink Sue’s office, sitting cross-legged on one of her nice leather recliners, moving back and forth slightly.   
“Are you excited?” She asks me as I go about judging her.  
Shrink Sue is in her mid forties, laugh lines around blue eyes, auburn hair in a studious bun. Her face is calm and open, like she doesn’t mind that I’m wasting her time. Shrink Sue has a box of small, polished pebbles that I’ve got both hands buried in shamelessly.  
One good thing about shrinks; they’ve seen weirder shit than a teenage girl swishing her hands around in a box of rocks. This is Sensory Seeking Behavior and very good for my disordered little brain. All of the books say so.   
I am tame for many of Shrink Sue’s patients. I don’t cut or burn myself, I don’t have a recorded history of suicide attempts, I don’t bite strangers or puke my food up or have sex just to feel something. I’m fucked up but not noticeably like that. I’m not a danger to myself or others.   
Shrink Sue is one of those special ones that look out specifically for problem children with rough home lives and/or problems with the law. Foster kids, mostly. The ones that are in the system because of suspicion/confirmation of physical/sexual/emotional abuse along with extreme neglect.   
That describes pretty much every foster kid I know at one point or another, not that I can talk seeing as I check pretty much every box on the list.  
There really aren’t enough Shrink Sues out there, not enough for all of us.   
What makes me special for Shrink Sue above all the others?  
Not my magnificent smile and shining personality, that’s for damn sure.   
While I may be a clinically depressed, anxiety ridden weirdo, encased in ADHD and insomnia, a stone’s throw away from being autistic, I’ve still got stuff going for me.  
Hard to believe, I know.   
When I finally took the Mensa test at the age of fifteen and made it my bitch, the whole world opened up.  
Why? Smart, albeit mentally disturbed, people need smart shrinks.   
That, and CPS doesn’t want to be blamed if I finally snap and kill myself. I mean, foster kids are 2.5 times more likely to try to kill ourselves than average kids, and if an average brown foster kid kills themselves, it's no big whoop, they were brown and poor, they were probably gonna die young anyway. But as a smart brown foster kid things are different. I am Smart. I have Potential. Plus, all of my legal trouble has never made it to my record, which makes me A Good Girl.  
Smart Good Girls with Potential who kill themselves are A Tragic Loss. The media loves a tragic loss.   
I also have a parent now.   
I may have only met Spencer two weeks ago, but I feel like he’d be at least slightly upset if I dropped dead. Not that that’s saying much because I also feel like Spencer’s the type of person to be bummed about a friend’s goldfish dying, but whatever.  
“Sydney?” Shrink Sue asks.   
I look back at her. “Yes?”  
“I asked if you were excited about starting Clayton on Monday.”   
Sorry Shrink Sue, I was debating whether or not the man I am currently living with would be vaguely unhappy in the case of my untimely death. I wouldn’t mind having a yes to exchange with my mother’s blatant ‘no.’   
Boy, wouldn’t that send up some red flags.   
I cock my head to the left. “Is anyone ever excited about returning to the prison sentence that is high school?”   
Another thing about shrinks, I can be as cynical as I want without being a goth bitch as long as I don’t talk about stupid shit like taking a gun to class. You see, in the real world there is a fine line between being funny and sarcastic in a mysterious way and being an emo loser in need of help.   
A very very thin line.   
I toe the line pretty carefully. Black skinny jeans, band t-shirts, black and grey striped long sleeves, a healthy love for Green Day, Panic! at the disco, Skillet, and anything that ever showed up on Headbanger’s Ball.   
The difference?   
My jeans are tight enough to be considered borderline skanky, many of my shirts are cropped, I can use my cheerleader voice a the drop of a hat, my eyeliner isn’t thick enough, and I’m in every sport I can manage. I am also exceptionally good at hiding how fucked up I really am and how much I hate people.   
It's a strange talent but a talent nonetheless.   
Shrink Sue laughs her professional sounding yet genuine laugh.  
“You make a good point there.”  
I move my hands around in the box and rock a little quicker while I look around her office. My other shrink, the last one I mean, would’ve peered at me over her glasses and made comments like ‘why do you feel that way, Sydney?’ or ‘what makes you say that, Sydney?’ which was super annoying.  
Shrink Sue pauses for a moment to see if I’m going to say anything else but I’m not going to so she moves on.  
“You know, Sydney, these first few sessions are pretty much get-to-know-yous’. We can talk about anything you want right now.”   
I trail my pointer finger in swirls through the pebbles.  
“I have nothing would like to say about myself.” I respond mildly.  
“Okay,” she responds agreeably “How about you tell me about your friends then?”  
I look up at her suddenly and narrow my eyes, making her grin widen.   
What a dirty shrink trick.   
As the mom friend I am legally required to brag about my family any time an opportunity arises because they’re amazing and I love them.   
“I have five best friends.” She sets her clipboard on the couch next to her and leans forward ready to take in some juicy gossip.  
“Oh, yeah? Do they have names?”   
No, only barcodes.  
“Jordyn, Hollis, Sebby, Leo, and Aybee.”   
She raises her eyebrows.  
“Aybee is an interesting name.”  
“It’s a nickname.”   
“What’s it short for?”   
“The letters A and B.” 

We talk about my friends for the rest of the session. How Aybee is going to NYU Film School, Hollis is a beauty blogger with her sights set for OTech, Jordyn is on her way to play basketball for UCLA, where her boyfriend, Leo, will only be two hours away studying Marine Biology at PLNU, and finally Sebby, the closest thing I will ever have to a big brother. He’s going to UNLV to be a Culinary arts major, and he’s going to do just fine because, goddamn, can that boy cook. 

I stroll out the door of the shrinks office and head for the waiting area at exactly five o’clock and Spencer isn’t there which is unsurprising because he has a job.  
I sit down in a chair and get ready to wait. It only takes five minutes for my phone to start playing Beethoven’s fifth symphony, Spencer’s ringtone. I have it set to play the happier notes first, cutting off the ‘duh duh duh duhhhhhh’ which is way too ominus for Spencer.   
“Hey,” I greet  
“Sydney, Hi.” He always sounds surprised when I answer the phone, like I’m an old friend who called after a decade without contact. It's odd.   
“How’d it go?” He asks nervously. Always nervous with me.   
“It was lovely. She asked me questions about my dog while I played with small rocks. Quite a breakthrough.”   
And this is why he is always so nervous around you.   
There is no response on the other end for a moment, then-  
“Oh.”   
Wonderful job, Sydney, you’ve confused him. See if he cares when you die now.  
“That- that was a joke, Spence. I was being facetious.”   
“Oh!” he says again, sounding relieved and I can’t help but think that for a profiler he is not picking up a single thing I am putting down.  
Maybe it’s because you’re a sarcastic sack of crap.   
Or it’s just really hard to read people over the phone.   
“Are you on your way?” I ask, leaning to look out the window, like perhaps he will just teleport here on the spot.   
“No, that’s why I called, the team and I are finishing up paperwork right now and then we’re heading back to the appartment for dinner.”   
He pauses and my heart sinks a little. So it begins.   
“Oh, yeah,” I say, trying to put some pep in my voice.   
I knewknewknew this would happen.  
“I’ll see you tomorrow then?” I ask.  
Friends coming over means that Sydney has to find somewhere else to sleep. Not that much of an inconvenience back home, here is a little different. Friends’ houses are out, Uncle Tony’s is out, Nonna’s is out, park benches are out unless I want hypothermia. Shelters suck. Maybe a church…   
“What?” His voice is loud and shocked.  
Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck.   
How long does he want me gone?   
My breathing quickens a little as the rambling begins.   
“Do you want me to cook first? I can cook, I mean I’m no Gino D’ Acampo but I’m decent- I just… I can find somewhere to go for tonight, finding somewhere longer might be difficult but I can do it- I mean I did it with Maria all the time so it’s no big deal-”   
“Sydney,” he interrupts my rambling “Slow down. What are you talking about?” His voice sounds strangely calm- albeit a little disturbed- when he should be yelling at me because I’m talking too much. I shift my weight in the chair and clench my fist so my yellow polished nails dig into my palms. My face must be all pale and scrunched up like it gets when I’m stressed out because the receptionist is giving me a worried look.  
“Your friends are coming over.”   
“Yes,” he says in the same calm voice “If you aren’t comfortable with them coming over I can say no.” he offers.  
My sharp breathing comes to a halt all together.   
“What? No. You can have friends over, you don’t have to keep doing things for me, I can find somewhere else to sleep-”   
“Why would you have to find somewhere else to sleep?”   
I squint and move my head back a little bit.   
Is this some sort of trap?  
It feels like a trap.   
“Because… I can’t… I’m not supposed to… I shouldn’t be around when the friends are over. It’s against the rules.” 

“How many times do I have to tell you to stay out of my fucking way when I have people over you stupid little slut? How many times do I have to teach you this fucking lesson before it sinks in?!”   
Mom sits at the table chugging a bottle of vodka watching this all go on with blank eyes. ‘Please’ I think ‘please help me.’ But there’s a spoon on the table, burned black. Rubber tie off, syringe. They’re both loaded. She isn’t going to help me. She never helps me.   
He is screaming and all I can think is ‘thank god Nico isn’t here. Thankgodthankgodthankgod.’   
He’s got me backed up against the fridge and he is loudloudloud.   
My eyes squinch and my muscles twist, like they are trying to rip their way out of my body. His voice hurts, it always hurts, but it hurts more when he’s yelling.   
“Stop doing that with your face! Look at me! Look at me!” An empty beer bottle flies by and shatters against the cupboard, glass flies everywhere nicking my chin. I glance up and focus on his mouth. His teeth are yellow, front tooth chipped, there is a drop of spit on the corner of his mouth. I hate him. I hate him so much.   
Why can’t he die? Why can’t he just die and leave me alone? Why can’t they both just leave me alone?   
“I’m sorry,” That’s what I’m supposed to do. I apologize every time. It’s a rule. It comes out just above a whisper.   
He lunges forward and grabs a chunk of hair from the back of my head. My body makes a squeaky little mouse sound without my consent.  
“You’re gonna be sorry.” 

“Sydney, are you still there?” He sounds a little worried now.   
“What? Yeah. Yeah, sorry I’m still here.”   
“What happened? Are you okay?”   
“Yeah. God, I’m sorry I just spaced out. What were you saying?”   
“I was just saying that I really want you there the team wants to see you again. JJ is bringing Henry and Hotch is bringing Jack.”   
Henry is Spencer’s godson and a total cutie-pie if the picture of him dressed as Spencer for Halloween is anything to go by. Jack must be Hotch’s son.   
“Yeah. Okay. What time?”   
I scrub at my face, trying to pull my shit together.   
You are better than this. It’s just a dinner party.   
I’ve never been invited to a dinner party before, unless family reunions count.  
“Around seven? I’ll be home in an hour, though.”   
He says it like a reassurance, for me or him I’m not sure.  
“Maybe it’s better if we reschedule-”   
“No!” I almost shout “No.” I say quieter. “It’s fine, don’t cancel your plans. Do you want me to cook? My spaghetti is pretty alright. Do you like Italian? It’s kind of the only thing I know how to make for dinner.”   
“You don’t have to cook-”   
“Its okay, I like cooking and its really the least I can do. Is anyone allergic to anything?”   
“Um… No. Not that I know of.”   
“Okay, great. I have to go. Bye.”   
“Sy-” he starts but I don’t hear the rest because I already hung up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that this story is super angsty and you guys are more than likely getting really sick of this, but if season fourteen is telling us anything it is that this show is super fucking angsty. Can you believe how big JJ’s baby Michael has gotten? Or that Matthew Gray Gubbler has said about ten words in the last few episodes combined? Like, give my man some lines. Anyway things will hopefully get brighter from here. I was also thinking about having Hotch do a profile of Sydney? Please please please r and r. I love you guys. 
> 
> 1-800-273-8255: Suicide hotline number  
> 1-800-422-4453: Child abuse hotline number


	11. Chapter 11

Garcia is the first to arrive, other than Spencer who has been hovering around, constantly checking on me after I slipped up at Shrink Sue’s. I can hear her rhythmic little knock all the way from the kitchen where I’m putting some of the final touches on the sauce I made pretty much just for her after remembering that she is a vegetarian halfway through making my spaghetti with meat sauce. She greets Spencer as ‘Boy Wonder’ before bounding into the kitchen to hunt for more prey.   
I feel oddly glad that Garcia is the first one here, though. She’s pretty sure that I’m the best thing since sliced bread, which makes it kind of hard to keep a hostile front on my end.   
“That smells amazing,” she gushes, clicking her way into the kitchen on neon pink heels. I catch sight of my motor oil stained Timbs and wince. I wasn’t in the mood to dress up for Shrink Sue, which is really coming back to bite me square on the ass.   
I grin over my shoulder at her.  
“Thanks.”  
“No problem, my munchkin, it’s the truth. Is there anything I can help with?”  
I hesitate. I’m sort of a hurricane when I need to do something this big on such short notice, which means I need everyone out of my way. However, I have 30 minutes before the rest of the team shows up, if I’m lucky. I still need to make the bread and finish up with the Garcia Special.   
“Um...yeah,” I admit, earning a hurt look from Spencer who was denied the privilege earlier. My heart twists a little at the kicked puppy eyes he gives me. I sigh. Time to put on the big girl panties.   
“Can you stir this?” I ask Garcia, offering her the whisk to the pot on the stove in front of me.  
“Of course, Muffin,” She says taking the whisk.  
“Okay cool, you have to stir kind of fast or it will burn to the bottom.”   
She nods, smiling widely.   
“Um, alright,” I round on Spencer “Wanna help me make the bread?”  
He pulls out of his head-ducked position to study me, needing to know if I really want his help. I don’t not want it. I raise my eyebrows slightly like ‘well?’  
Garcia giggles. “Just tell him what to do, Chef.”   
I smile a little as he moves into the tiny kitchen with us. I pass him a bow of butter.   
“Melt this then mix it with the olive oil, please, everything is already measured out.”   
I spread tin foil over a flat pan and preheat the oven quickly, before cutting the loaf of store bought italian bread down the middle. Nonna would kill me if she knew I was using store bought bread and noodles.   
“La gatta frettolosa ha fatto i gattini ciechi*,” She would say “Such things are better made at home.”   
I’m not saying I disagree, but considering my set of circumstances you either eat the soup or jump out the window.   
When Spencer is done I have him paint the mixture on the bread and pull the Garcia Special off the stove, setting Garcia on the cheese while I check on the simmering American Spaghetti sauce and the warm noodles. I pass a hand over my loosely braided hair, taking a breath before hoping back into the fray. I pry open the ziplock baggie of cinnamon sugar scuffles I made yesterday and dump them on a plate.   
Garcia, who took many of my macarons from last week, laughs.   
“You sure love your pastries, Munchkin.”   
“I bake when I’m stressed.” I reply without thought, before cringing at the admittance of weakness.  
She scans my lanky teenage body.   
“You must not be stressed very often.”   
I laugh a genuine laugh at that. I live in a constant state of stress, self hatred, and exhaustion.   
“I work in a bakery, I don’t eat my stress, other people purchase that concession.”  
I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve used my set of keys at three am to stress bake for the next day. I’ve lost track of all of the times Mrs. Lisowski has found me at the icing table, unconscious, and covered in flour.   
I offer Garcia the plate, from which she grabs one of my little Ukrainian crescent cookies. She takes a bite and her eyes widen.   
“Your stress tastes awesome.”   
“As it should,” I agree, offering the plate to Spencer only to be interrupted by the doorbell, which he goes to answer.   
Doesn’t matter.   
“I think we’re done. I need to go change.” I say, darting out of the kitchen and down the hall to my room without much notice from whoever is in the living room. I dig around my closet for some somewhat nice clothes. I’m currently wearing a black t-shirt with Frank Sinatra’s mug shot on it, which is an absolute classic for me. I had my green hoodie zipped over it, so it is still clean. I debate changing it before conceding that nothing will beat the godly powers of Frank Sinatra. I ditch the hoodie and pull on a black/grey/white knit cardigan that Hollis picked out before digging through the converse shoe box I’ve been using for jewelry. When I emerge from the depths I slap on my wide black bracelet with yellow sunflowers on it made from recycled plant material that Aunt Ruth got me from India. Some people, like my sister, ask for keychains or scarves from other places. I ask for bracelets. And postcards.   
Then it is on to the pants.   
The thing about sensory processing disorder is I have to plot and plan my way through literally everything. Can I buy this prepackaged paper without the angels of hell descending upon me? Do I need to bring earplugs just in case someone makes one of the Bad Sounds. Will the seams and tags of this outfit cause me to scrape of the epidermal layer of skin on my back? Can I handle eating yogurt today (the answer is no. I hate yogurt. I may as well be eating cold cat vomit.).   
Pants, however, take a very special sort of planning. My top is dark so I need to wear light wash jeans. I pick up the only pair with both pockets and no rips to pick at. My nails are chipped to beat hell but that is a problem for another time. I touch up the places where my makeup smudged, redoing my lips entirely, opting for a lighter pink, more natural looking. It is the color I wear when I want to look innocent and unassuming.   
Sometimes a good lipstick can do more hiding than anything else.  
I look in the mirror and smile my ‘I’m-a-good-girl-honor-roll-daughter-you-wish-you-had’ smile. It’s different from my ‘fundraiser’ smile but I’m not going to lie and say that I’m not trying to sell something. 

Alex Blake, the professor, is in the living room chatting it up with Spencer and Garcia. Her voice is solem and professional but still soft. For a brief moment I wonder why she is always so robotic and hollow sounding before stuffing that thought away into the dark recesses of my mind for further analysis on a later date.   
Basic greetings are exchanged and I smile and nod like black barbie come to life reminding myself of all of the reasons that no one ever uses the word smart to describe me anymore. ‘Hot’ and ‘nice rack’ being the common replacements amongst my peers. I feel like neither of those options can be fully appreciated in this setting so I stick with ‘sweet’ and ‘charming.’   
Next comes Morgan with his super hot girlfriend Savannah who really looks like black Barbie, where I look like black Barbie’s ghetto cousin. Morgan goes “Hey, Baby Reid, what’s shakin’?” and claps his big hand on my shoulder and I laugh and say “nothin’ much.”  
Rossi shows up shortly after with a couple bottles of expensive ass wine that my entire family couldn’t afford if a glass of if we combined all of our salaries together.   
“Salve, Topolina!” He grins, kissing the top of my head, and for a moment I swear I could burst into tears because he is just like my gramps; down to the stupid little nickname.   
“Chiao, Signor Rossi! Che piacere vederti!”   
He seems a little shocked over my fluency while I ride the high of speaking my native language with someone outside of the family for the first time in years with ease.   
“Tu parli italiano?” he questions  
“Si,” I respond “e la mi prima lingua.”   
I beam. God, it feels good to not have to watch my english and just let the accent my family raised me with show. This is the closest to home that I’ve felt since even before I left Vegas.   
I can breathe. 

Hotch’s POV

There are things you learn as a profiler, things that become so deeply ingrained in you that it becomes difficult to separate them from everything else you do. You analyse and note and calculate everything that everyone around you does or says. That was why there were rules against profiling your own team, because you can’t ever be comfortable knowing that there are five other people constantly watching and breaking down everything you do, and if you aren’t comfortable then you can’t do your job to the best of your abilities. No one follows the rule, though. They pretend they do, they observe subtly, subconsciously. Because they can’t help it. You can’t just flip a switch and turn off years of conditioning.   
That was why he knew about Sydney Reid before the rest of the team. Because he couldn’t help but notice how distracted that Reid had seemed suddenly, the file he kept pulling out of his bag, rereading it over and over, sometimes not even reading, just staring blankly. He had seen both Morgan and JJ try to weasel information out of him, gaining no ground.   
As unit chief it was his job to watch carefully and intercept any less than perfect behavior, whether he wanted to or not. He liked to think that it was all because he needed his team at peak performance, which was true, but not the whole truth. He also needed to watch their mental health. Closely.   
Unsubs weren’t the only danger they faced constantly.   
So he had to call Reid up to his office, ignoring the kicked puppy look he got in response. In the decade they had worked together, many things had changed about Spencer Reid, but his reaction to getting called out by authority figures was not one of those things.   
The first thing he had done upon entering Hotch’s office was apologise, which was off putting because he was fully prepared to have to fight and pry any sort of admittance of a problem out of him.   
“What is going on with you?”   
“Hotch…” he had said, like he wasn’t sure if he should say anything or how he should say it.   
“I might have a kid.”   
Hotch choked a little. Whatever he had been expecting that was most certainly not it. Reid was blushing furiously, eyes glinting with a mix of terror, guilt, shame and maybe even something akin to happiness. Everyone knew that Reid wanted kids someday, no one had expected today to be that day though.   
“A daughter. Sydney.”   
“Ho-” he began before catching himself, he was a grown man with a son. He knew exactly how.   
When? Where? Are you sure? Those were the real questions.   
He didn’t ask though, all he said was   
“Explain.”   
So Spencer started talking; quickly. He didn’t start with the kid but with her mother. Maria Romano, third youngest in a family of six, who understood what it was like to have absentee parents.   
It took a minute, but Hotch realised that this was probably the first time that Spencer had ever spoken about this girl with anyone, maybe even Gideon. Who had he had to tell before, when this was actually going on? Spencer didn’t have any friends at that age, his father had up and left years before, and his mother- no matter how much he cared for her- was a paranoid schizophrenic. There were so many adverse reactions she could have.   
So he paid attention. To every detail.  
How she had emigrated to the United States from Italy when she was five and had lived in a three bedroom house packed to the brim with eight people in a neighborhood that Spencer’s father had warned him was full of criminals.   
He talked about a whole year of letters and phone calls and emails, coming home every from college every other weekend to see more than just his mom. He talked about spring break, getting drunk and her neighbor’s party. He jumped over the more intimate parts of that story, face red, which worked just as well for Hotch because, unit chief or no, there were some things that he definitely didn’t need to know about his team.   
He talks about three more months of correspondence before complete and utter silence. Phone calls went to voicemail, emails remained unanswered, and letters came back unopened, until her kid sister had taken pity on him and picked up the phone, telling him that Maria couldn’t see him anymore.   
Spencer looked hurt, even sixteen years later, recounting that part.  
Hotch understood that. You never really get over the first person you loved. He had never forgotten Hailey, not even before her death.   
And then came the file.   
“A social worker stopped by my apartment last week.” Spencer had said, hesitating before handing the file to Hotch.   
The timeline matched.  
Sydney Lavinia Romano-Reid was born two months premature, common in children born to teenagers, on December 4, 1997. The file came with the school photo of a teenage girl with large, hazel eyes and a strained smile. He started looking for things that were Reid and he didn’t know how to feel when he found them. The color of her hair, the eyes, the faint dimples. 

There was a lot more in that file.   
Things that he couldn’t have profiled out of the picture but couldn’t help but pick up on now. Things that he was trained to notice in both victims and unsubs.   
There was the way that she was constantly perched on the balls of her feet, heels never quite touching the ground. It was a predatory behavior, an unconscious one, how was sure, but predatory all the same. Always ready to fight and flee at the same time. He could see as her eyes scanned over the room over and over, a common sign of PTSD, always looking for a threat.   
And she considered Hotch to be that threat. Sydney had taken to David and Derek like a fish to water. She was less comfortable with Spencer and Garcia and even Beth, but she clearly did not consider them a real threat. Hotch and Blake however, she showed no signs of warming up to what so ever. That didn’t mean that she was cold to either of them, she just gave them a wider berth, watching them more carefully. She caught Hotch observing her once and looked him calmly in the eyes, catching that they were both sizing each other up, giving him a respectful nod before jumping back into conversation with David. Her whole face softened when she spoke to Jack though, shoulders relaxing a bit, corners of her mouth pulling upwards. She clearly spent a lot of time around younger kids, maybe had a sibling.   
She behaved the same way around Henry, when JJ and Will finally arrived.   
“Henry, this is Sydney, Uncle Spence’s daughter, Sydney this is my son, Henry” JJ had introduced. Sydney had crouched down and held out her hand with a grin.   
“Nice to meet you, Henry.”   
“I’m five!” Henry announced, in the oversharing way that many young children do which earned around of laughs.   
Sydney had fake gasped and moved her face in a disbelieving gesture.   
“What?! No way.”   
“Yes way.”   
“You’re so old.”   
And so on before Henry ran off to play with Jack and Sydney stood back up.  
JJ had rested her hand on Sydney’s shoulder.   
“This is Will.”   
As soon as Sydney laid her eyes upon William LaMontagne’s face and all of the blood drained from her features faster than he’d ever seen that he realised that he was no longer the number one threat, Will was. When Will stuck his hand out to shake her hand her whole body flinched backward, like he had taken a swing at her, which Spencer had picked up on. She stared at his hand for a moment before grabbing it with her own, offering him a shaky smile.   
“Nice to meet you.”   
And she didn’t sound even remotely genuine. Just scared. 

At dinner she sat smack between Henry and Jack on the floor, back against the bookcase. Watching, nails franticly tapping against the floor in anticipation. She kept stealing glances at will, looking concerned between JJ and Henry, not bothering to watch Hotch at all anymore. Compared to Will, no one else was a real threat.   
“This is amazing,” Garcia gushed over the vegetarian pasta sauce that both she and the boys were eating. “How are you so good at this?”   
He watched Sydney shrug.   
“That one is my sister’s favorite, she went vegetarian when she was eight so we eat this a lot.”   
Garcia gasped.   
“There are more of you?”   
Sydney glanced at Spencer. “Unless there are other kids over here that no one is telling me about, then yeah. I have two younger siblings on my mom’s side.”   
Spencer blushed bright red.   
“How old are they?” Savannah asked kindly.   
For a brief moment there was a glint of parental pride in Sydney’s eyes, her lips twitched up into a smile.   
“My sister, Nico, just turned ten in September and my brother, Luca, is-” her voice cut off for a moment and her smile faded “was going to be two in August.”  
Silence coated the room and Sydney set down her fork. He looked over at Spencer, who looked just as stunned as everyone else.   
JJ cleared her throat.  
“So, uh, where is your sister living now?”   
Sydney shifted.   
“With her dad in Vegas.”   
“What is she like?” Garcia questioned “is she as adorable as you?”  
Sydney shot her a fake arrogant smile.   
“You know how cute I am? She’s like ten times that. Mostly because she is short, plays the violin, and thinks pigtails are the height of fashion.”   
Garcia’s eyes widened comically.   
“Do you have pictures?”   
“Of course.”   
She grinned as she took out her phone and offered it to Garcia who gasped.   
“What a total Cutie Pie! Are those your pets?”   
“Uh, the boston terrier is mine, her name is Georgia. The bulldog and the cat are Nico’s. Naaz is the bulldog and Sophockles The Cat is the cat.”   
Beth choked on her drink a little.   
“Sophockles.” she said in a disbelieving tone.   
“Sophockles The Cat.” Sydney corrected. “His name was originally ‘Sophocles The Cat’ but the closest Nico could get was Sophockles and it kinda stuck. He doesn’t respond to anything else anymore.”   
Garcia passed the phone around the room earning some ‘what a good picture’s’ and ‘they are so adorable’s.’  
The photo was Sydney’s lock screen. There was a little girl with black hair holding an icecream cone away from two eager dogs while a cat sat on her lap. The girl was sitting on a set of sagging porch stairs in front of a house coated in peeling paint.   
He gave it back to her. Watching as she put her phone back and continued to watch for threats in the room, eyes always going back to Henry and Jack, looking as though she would be ready to jump up and protect them at any moment.   
There are things you know as a profiler, things that you can never unknow and never take back.   
He and Spencer made eye contact.   
There was more that happened in Vegas than what the file said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translation   
> Rossi: hello, little mouse  
> Syd: Hello, Mister Rossi, it is good to see you again  
> R: You speak italian  
> S: it is my first language
> 
> Sorry that took so long, guys. I’ve been sick and then I had to study for my ACT’s which I took today, so this is going up in celebration. The Will thing will be explained in the next chapter, he isn’t going to be made into a predator in this story because I think that JJ and Will are a super cute couple. Please, please, please R and R. It is so hard to want to keep this story going if I can’t tell if people actually like it.   
> Thank you so much.


	12. Chapter 12

The first day of school starts early for me no matter the time of year. First impressions are important. Every inch of my body has been plucked and polished, from the stray hairs of my eyebrows to the fresh coat of royal blue polish on my toes.

Broken down on a scientific basis, I'm rather pretty.

Ovular face, full lips, decent cheekbones. I'm relatively symmetrical. I look just like every other scientifically pretty person out there.

I have my own little idiosyncrasies, of course. I have my freckles, which sit on my cheekbones and my nose and the tops of my shoulders. The Aunts gush about how they make me look so adorable, which was okay when I was five but isn't going to fly now. The freckles get covered.

Then there's my two front teeth, which overlap slightly on the bottom. Uncle Tony swears on the Bible that they give me character, and I'm too poor for aligners, so I'm compelled to agree. Besides, no one has made fun of them since I was thirteen, so I suppose they don't really matter.

Finally, my eyes. Those are harder to cover. Bare faced, my eyes are just slightly too large, large enough that I always look mildly surprised. Like oh, really?

'The retarded robot clearly sees something we don't' Audie Castillo used to say before making her eyes as wide as possible and staring intently at me in a mock imitation of my natural state. This is the same girl who made fun of my teeth and had her boyfriend throw me into dumpsters, but that's besides the point.

I'm lucky that my eyes can be shrunk just enough with a few quick swipes of black eyeliner, but its still my least favorite part of my morning routine.

Every time I look into my old eyes I feel wrong, like there is dirt in my bloodstream.

My opinions are split on the uniform.

On the one hand, I don't have to worry if my thrift store/ punk attire is going to make me a social pariah because every other girl in the school is going to be dressed pretty much the same. White, button up top, wine colored/grey/black plaid skirt-fingertip length-,and white knee highs. Choose between the wine colored blazer with grey elbow patches and the school crest, the grey colored cardigan with the school crest, or the black sweater vest with the school crest on it. You also wear a little tie thing that looks sort of like a bow. It matches the skirt and just crosses in front, clipped with a pin of- you guessed it- the school crest.

On the other hand the uniform is completely impractical. How exactly am I supposed to do lab experiments or weld and work on cars in a skirt? Exposed skin, loose, flammable fabric, and the extended probability of someone seeing my underwear? Talk about inappropriate attire.

Clayton is one of those "Progressive" and "Individual" misogynistic private schools where you are allowed to accessorize. To an extent. You get to pick your own backpack, there are no shoe requirements other than they either need to be black, white, grey, or wine colored. There are no make up restrictions and no rules against piercings.

I won't ever tell Spencer what I really think of the uniform, though. The man was pretty jazzed when he got the call saying I got accepted and could start on Monday.

He took me uniform shopping.

I can't remember anyone ever taking me shopping. People usually just dump hand-me-downs (or in Michael's case, cash) on me and send me on my way. I'm not going to say that it wasn't extremely awkward and that both of our faces weren't red the whole time, but it was still probably the nicest thing that anyone has done for me in a while.

I have three skirts, three buttons ups, five pairs of socks, one blazer, one cardigan, and a vest. For the first day of school, I choose the blazer. What can I say, I'm a sucker for elbow patches. I also dig my black and white Air Jordan 12 Retro's out of my volleyball bag. I bought them off Ebay the season before last and they've been serving as my volleyball/basketball shoes ever since. They've never been off the court before.

Clayton should be honored.

I stare into the mirror one final time making sure my hair is perfectly straight in its sleek ponytail. I already made the executive decision to put on my lipstick and put in my earrings in at school.

Like a tattoo, I feel like Spencer would be terrified if he found out about the bodily adjustments I've made. My last therapist was sure I only got them to get my mother's attention (as though that would have worked) but I really just like them. They look cool and they're soothing to touch. It's nice to feel something solid beneath my skin, like small pieces of bone.

I check my eyeliner one more time before admitting to myself that I'm stalling and go into the kitchen for breakfast. Spencer already made coffee so I roll up to the pot and pour some into one of the mugs I adopted as my own.

"Good morning!" Spencer says from by the stove and I notice for the first time that there is a bowl of batter on the counter and a pan of the stove with a little brown circle of batter cooking in the center.

"Morning." I greet in return

Pancakes.

He made pancakes.

There might be enough for two but I don't get my hopes up too high. Miller used to do things like this when times were tough for me money wise, right after he stopped paying the rent for the apartment and I was trying to balance my two full time, part time jobs and whatever other odd jobs I could pick up. He would go out and buy an ass load of amazing groceries, make an fantastic meal, and make us sit there and watch while he ate it all and we got nothing but whatever was there before the shopping, usually orange juice and saltines n' ketchup. Whatever food he didn't eat he put in a cupboard and locked so we (My sister and I) couldn't get to it.

"I made pancakes," he says like I can't already see that. He sounds pretty proud of himself, like a little kid helping his mom cook.

"Do you like pancakes?"

I hesitate because, yes I do. I fucking love pancakes.

"Uh...Yeah. I love pancakes."

Maria used to make chocolate chip pancakes on Christmas morning.

I look at my coffee and wait for him to say "That sucks." Just like Miller always did and laugh like its just the funniest fucking thing.

"Great!" He says "they should be done in a minute."

I hover for a moment before sitting down at the table, still not looking at him even though my stomach is ready to sit up and beg. I check my watch. Forty-six minutes before until the bus gets here, and by here I mean two blocks away. Whatever. I unzip my backpack and dig through it. Two five-subject notebooks, one folder, pencil bag (equipped with mechanical pencils, pens, and pink pearl erasers). I pull out my stim bag and check for the billionth time that I have everything I could possibly need. Tangle, squishy polar bear, thinking putty, hacky sack (lemon scented), ear plugs, earbuds, zipper bracelet, and a piece of Velcro plastered to the inside of the bag itself. Its overkill but I am taking no chances. If I have a tornado-explosion-meltdown today I will crawl into a hole and die. It has been over a year, close to two. I don't plan on breaking that record anytime soon.

Spencer sets a plate with two pancakes down in front of me and I jump a little. I wonder briefly if he wants me to move but he sits across from me with his own plate so I'd say it is fair to assume they're for me . Joy flutters around in my stomach at the realization that he made pancakes form my first day of school. I smile at him, a genuine one, the kind where the faint dimple in my cheeks show.

"Thanks."

He blinks, looking both surprised and happy.

"You're welcome." he smiles back.

I make a mental note to smile at him more often, which probably should have been a common sense thing, but whatever.

I put a little bit of syrup on mine and start putting chunks in my mouth. He's watching me subtly, enough that I know he's worried about my eating habits.

Damn.

It is so weird to have someone always conscious of everything I do, especially with the whole 'profiler employed by a government agency' deal.

"Are you ready for school?" he asks after a while.

"Yep." I respond brightly, ignoring the dread that creeps back in.

The conclusion I've come to is that if I could survive third through ninth grade as a child prodigy with no social skills or fashion sense in the worst schooling system in Las Vegas, how bad could a private school of seven hundred kids really be?

"I've talked to your guidance counselor about renewing your IEP, but she said it might take a while to set up…"

I ignore the completely irrational way that my blood runs cold because I got over this shit years ago and I refuse to let it resurface now after spending three fucking hours with someone who somewhat resembled him, I mean weren't the last couple nights of nightmares enough? The. Man. Is. In. Prison.

"IEP?" I muse, shaking it off "I still have one of those?"

He frowns.

"According to Susan you do, she told me to make sure it gets renewed."

I frown and wave my hand dismissively.

"Don't bother. My foster parents (don'tdon'tdon't) set it up when I was nine and it hasn't been renewed since. Nobody really followed it anyway."

He frowns again, deeper. He looks concerned for me. That's something you don't see everyday.

"That's illegal."

I smirk "So is jay walking."

"I'm renewing it just in case you need it."

I shrug. "Okay."

He changes the subject.

"Do you have everything you need?"

"I think so."

"Did I put the papers in your backpack?"

"In my folder." I nod, scrubbing my plate in the sink.

"Do you have your epi-pen?"

I pause for a second before drying the plate and putting it away.

"I-uh- don't have one." I can imagine the look on his face.

"You don't have one with you?" he asks to clarify.

"I don't have one at all." I correct, turning around to look at him.

"What?" he's frowning "I thought Susan said-"

"She probably did." I interrupt "And I did have one but it expired forever ago."

"You didn't get another one?"

I snort quietly.

"Are you kidding? Those things are like six hundred dollars and I don't have health insurance."

I stoop down and pick up my backpack.

"Besides," I continue "even if I could scrounge up that kind of cash, I'm a minor. They would never just give it to me."

"Maria-"

"Is a crackhead," I interrupt. "Or a pothead, or a 'my-kids-adderall' head, or a 'pretty-much-anything else-she-could-get-her-hands-on' head. Taking her into a pharmacy, especially high and with money, would have caused all sorts of problems that, honestly, aren't even worth dealing with."

He flinches a little when I call Maria names, which peeves me off just a little bit because if anyone gets to call my shitty mother names without judgement it is me.

"What if you have an allergic reaction?"

I pull on my backpack.

"Y'know, I think that's what scientists call natural selection."

I'm joking but he doesn't laugh. Tough crowd.

I glance at my watch.

"You're going to be late to work."

He looks like he wants to continue this conversation but I wasn't lying when I said he's going to be late. I have ten minutes to catch the bus.

He gives me a look that says that this conversation will be continued later that I pretend not to notice.

"Well… have a good first day."

"Thanks. Have a good day at work."

And then he's gone.

And, after I finish the dishes, so am I.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a short one because I am splitting up a really long one. The Will thing was sort of low key explained, it will be better explained later on it the story. Anyways, Happy Hols you guys, please R and R! :)


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